The relationship between social scientists and the broader social sphere is changing as greater pressure is placed on academics to demonstrate the social relevance and public impact of their research. This pressure is creating widespread concern – intellectual, professional and moral – about the direction of many disciplines and what can be done to thwart what some academics view as the ‘tyranny of relevance’. It is in exactly this context that this paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach in order to offer a more sophisticated and informed account of ‘the politics of engaged scholarship’.