Industry engagement with tourism research: The impacts of social control and emotional labour

•We examine researcher autonomy and industry engagement with match-funded research.•The emotional labour of early career academics is unrecognised but important.•We utilise innovative data to provide an account of industry funded research.•Pragmatic approach to methodological applications for future collaborative projects

With mounting pressure for ‘high impact’ research outputs and the attainment of external funding, universities are increasingly engaging in industry match-funded doctoral research programmes. Promoted as effective approaches for engaging in knowledge transfer, the challenges around such collaborative partnerships are scarcely discussed. E-mails, journals and meeting logs over a two year period generated by the author were analysed to examine some of the challenges faced by doctoral students involved in such programmes. The findings illustrate the challenges inherent in industry engagement and the inevitable social control over research. A reflexive account is adopted to explore issues of access, the social control of research and emotional labour. The paper hopes to stimulate discussion on reflective practice in tourism, and how to improve these relationships and their outcomes.