Designing a multiple case study approach for studying universities’ community engagement

This working paper outlines the methodological design employed by PLACES (Portraits and Landscapes of Academic Community Engagement Scholarship), a PRIN 2022 project, that investigates science-society interactions through Community Engagement (CE) initiatives in higher education institutions across Italy, France, and the United Kingdom. Drawing on a multiple case study methodology, this project aims to explore how and why universities engage with their communities and examines the conditions that enable or constrain such initiatives and their transformative potential. PLACES integrates macro-, meso-, and micro-levels of analysis across three countries to address the complexity and context-dependency of CE practices, encompassing policy and systemic frameworks, institutional practices, and individual scholars’ experiences. By investigating diverse institutional contexts and drawing from a combination of data sources including policy documents, quantitative indicators, and qualitative interviews, the project employs data triangulation to provide an in-depth investigation of the object of study. The cases selected by this study reflect different academic traditions and administrative models, offering a foundation for cross-national comparisons. Ultimately, by studying situated CE initiatives within broader systemic and institutional contexts, PLACES seeks to provide evidence-based insights for university managers, policymakers, and scholars and contributes to the ongoing debate on the role of universities as active agents of societal change in an evolving higher education landscape.