Abstract
Circular economy (CE) transitions increasingly hinge on ecosystem-level coordination, yet research has rarely theorised academics as active ecosystem actors beyond their institutional umbrellas or as external knowledge providers. We address this gap by asking: how do academics co-create CE ecosystems, what roles do they enact, and what activities, enablers, and barriers shape these roles? We combine a scoping review of 86 CE ecosystem articles with 31 semi-structured interviews (32 academics) involved in circular fashion and textiles initiatives in the UK. We develop a role typology of academics as co-creators in CE ecosystems comprising four archetypes: Orchestrators (convening and aligning diverse actors), Knowledge Brokers and Capacity Builders (translating and circulating knowledge while building absorptive capacity), Critical Friends and Watchdogs (surfacing tensions, injustices, and questionable claims), and Impact Catalysts (mobilising resources, partnerships, and policy pathways to translate ideas into implementation). We show that each role is enabled by distinct mechanisms (e.g., trust-based networks, shared infrastructures, translation capabilities, policy access) and constrained by distinctive barriers (e.g., coordination burden, time-scale misalignment, definitional ambiguity, weak feedback loops, and misaligned academic incentives). Our findings extend CE ecosystem and co-creation theories by positioning academics as differentiated, role-bearing ecosystem actors whose co-creative work shapes circular transitions in practice.