Michael Burawoy's advocacy in 2004 of a ‘public sociology’ (Acker, 2005; Burawoy, 2005; Kalleberg, 2005; McLaughlin and Turcotte, 2007; Brym and Nakhaie, 2009) rekindled a long-running debate in academia on the role of intellectuals in addressing the social concerns of the societies of which they are a part (Rein, 1980; Jacoby, 1987; Brym and Myles, 1989; Kurzman and Owens, 2002). In the years since, scholars in diverse fields in the social sciences have grappled with the implications of this emphasis on their contribution to dealing with social issues (Clawson et al, 2007; Elliott and Williams, 2008; Jeffries, 2009; Smith, 2010; Hardy, 2013; Hanemaayerr and Schneider, 2014).

While the heated debate on the role of intellectuals in diverse fields, such as the natural sciences and humanities, is perhaps understandable given the distance between the nature of societal problems and the apparent goals of study in those fields, such debate seems less explicable for the helping professions (Fondacaro and Weinberg, 2002; Braveman and Suarez-Balcazar, 2009; Grace and Willis, 2012). This is especially so for social work. As a domain of academic study that emerged from the need to train professionals and to create knowledge relevant to alleviating social problems and distress (Smith, 1965; Kendall, 2000; Leighlinger, 2000), social work is an academic field in which professionals’ engagement in society-oriented research and activities would appear to be obvious.

Given social work's clear commitment to social justice and social change and its focus on the needs of populations adversely affected by social problems (Sewpaul and Jones, 2004; Marsh, 2005; Hoefer, 2016), it may also be assumed that social work academics would be policy actors at the forefront of involvement in the social policy process. Moreover, given their ‘closeness’ to the field, social work academics can be expected to play an active role in the policy process, above and beyond academics’ traditional role of disseminating knowledge.

There is indeed some evidence of social work academics’ involvement in policy processes in various countries (Landry, Amara, and Lamari, 2001; Sherraden, Slosar and Sherraden, 2002; Kaufman, 2011; Strier, 2011; Weiss-Gal and Gal, 2013; Butler, 2015; though see Karger and Hernández, 2004; Howard, 2010; and Mackinnon, 2009 for a more critical appraisal).