Bridging Academia and Community: Experiences in Implementing a ‘Service & Research Projects Hub’

In response to shifting higher education landscapes and increasing calls for civic engagement, a 'Service & Research Projects Hub' was scoped at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, a faculty of King’s College London, to evaluate the feasibility of connecting postgraduate students with local community organisations for collaborative dissertation research. Through mixed-methods evaluation involving 96 stakeholders, including students, faculty and community partners, this paper explores the opportunities and challenges of embedding community-engaged research within academic structures. Findings reveal high levels of enthusiasm across groups but also highlight barriers such as lack of research training, time constraints, ethical complexities and uneven institutional support. This study outlines key recommendations for improving collaborative research frameworks and proposes a scalable model for integrating community partnerships into academic teaching and research, with implications for wider institutional adoption.