This contribution focuses on collaborative practice and the mutual benefits which can derive from strategic partnerships between archives and academia. The study takes as its focus the establishment and early development of the Institute for the Study of Welsh Estates, which has operated as a joint initiative between the Archives and Special Collections and College of Arts and Humanities at Bangor University since 2013. This collaborative relationship mirrors broader trends and potentials in the collections-based research environment, which are seeing core sector-specific priorities such as cataloguing, conservation, collection advocacy and accessibility on the part of archives; and research, grant capture, teaching, public engagement and ‘impact’ on the part of academia, increasingly blurring into complementary and shared objectives. Here, we analyse how collaborative engagement with one archive in the Archives and Special Collections—the Penrhyn estate archive—is leading towards the delivery of strategic objectives across both sides of the partnership.