The issue of the engagement of universities with civil society, and inevitably within this with their local communities, is a generic concern internationally. All over the world we observe a huge emphasis being placed on the encouragement of a new set of relationships between universities and their communities. However, whilst we may represent this as a global trend, accelerated perhaps by an exchange of experiences and processes of policy imitation, the form of engagement retains considerable variation. Local contexts vary of course, but national institutional frameworks also differ, and university-community engagement reflects local cultures even whilst translating lessons from elsewhere into local actions.