Challenges facing the higher education sector globally include questions over what counts as knowledge and what are valid forms of both its reproduction and production. This paper addresses the question of how what counts as valid knowledge is challenged and how it changes over time. It does this via an analysis of examples of social responsiveness profiled as "portraits of practice" in the annual social responsiveness reports produced at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, a traditionally strong research university. In this paper, we discuss and analyse key themes emerging from this work and argue that social responsiveness not only serves to enhance the core functions of teaching and research but can act to change them. (Contains 3 notes.)