Local environmental action in the UK: Reflecting on the role and prospects for the researcher-activist.

There is a long tradition in in the UK (and beyond) for individual researchers, students and occasionally formal university structures to collaborate with communities in local environmental initiatives. While there is an established literature on the value of community engagement from universities, this rarely confronts the underlying motives, power-relations and ultimate outcomes involved. These issues can become magnified in the context of campaigns where communities feel threatened, particularly by state-sanctioned or development projects backed by big capital. Drawing on case studies from a wider project on the history of community planning in the UK (HOPE, funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council) this paper reflects on the role of researcher-activist in a number of historical community campaigns with the aim of highlighting the value and disadvantages that emerged from involvement. This will then be used to reflect on the current role of UK universities in relation to engagement with local communities and whether the increasing dominance of dark academia (Flemming 2021) constrains meaningful researcher-activism, or whether it could give rise to alternative forms of activism.