The notion of partnership is much in vogue as a means of bridging gaps between practitioners and researchers and taking forward the interplay of their concerns. At the same time some doubts are being raised about the appropriateness, viability and productiveness of what Robertson and Dale (2003) call 'designed' dialogues. Somewhat surprisingly there has not so far been a lot of discussion by those directly involved in the process within the Higher Education community, about how such collaborations play out in practice. While much of the information will be context specific, we need to capitalise on a range of different experiences in order to conceptualise what is at stake and to build up a picture of how to make the most of opportunities for advancing 'practice-informed research' and 'evidence-informed practice'. This paper seeks to make a contribution by drawing on the experiences accumulated within one of the disciplinary strands of a higher education project concerned with 'Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses' (ETL Project). The national Teaching-Learning Research Programme (TLRP), under which the ETL project was funded, is "strongly committed to maximising user- engagement throughout the research process … Through such partnerships, the relevance, worthiness and impact of each project's research can be maximised". As educational researchers, with some background in history as well as psychology and sociology, we have been working over a three year period with those responsible for the design and running of three first year and three later year history modules within three different universities. In this presentation we will discuss the ways in which at various levels we have sought to foster collaborative engagement across the several settings. We will consider some practical and theoretical rationales behind our approach, together with the actions taken, reactively as well as proactively, over the course of the research project. The focus of the paper will then shift to examine the independent account of one of our history 'partners' as to how she had perceived the collaborative process and its relationship to her institutional roles. Her observations provide insights into the complexities of the power dimension of 'designed' dialogues, as well as indicating how she reacted to, and interpreted the messages relayed (whether intentionally or inadvertently) by key elements of our efforts to render the research undertaking mutually beneficial. It is on the basis of the dual perspectives - of practitioners and researchers - that the paper will conclude with an analysis of what features turned out to be helpful and what was more problematic, and an initial exploration of the immediate and broader reasons why. [S. Robertson & R. Dale, '"Designed" Dialogues'. In M. Ginsburg & J. Gorostiaga, Limitations and Possibilities of Dialogue among Researchers, Policy Makers and Practitioners, 2003, 219-36.]