In this paper Vaillancourt reflects on the ‘practices of partnership’ in three community-university partnerships: Services aux collectivités (SAC) of UQAM, Laboratoire de recherche sur les pratiques et les politiques sociales, (LAREPPS) and the CURA on the Social Economy, (CURA-SE). Vaillancourt argue that this type of partnership is one way to ‘democratize knowledge’. Vaillancourt notes that the partnership between community members and academics is not a new phenomenon, however, the institutionalizationof the practice in Canada is relatively new. The paper discusses the positive aspects of engaging this type of research as well as several challenges (e.g. tensions arising when partner is also subject of an evaluation, need to maintain a sense of ‘researcher independence, tensions arising from ‘touchy’ findings, etc.) that have arisen in these partnership examples.