When Will Bailey-Watson (a history ITE tutor) and Charlie Crouch (a history PhD student) worked together to improve a history undergraduate course at their university, they realised that the benefits of collaboration between teachers and historians can flow both ways. In this article they offer an account of how they sought to create a structured collaboration between Will's history trainee teachers and history PhD students, in which the two groups worked together as equal partners. The two authors reflect on the reasons for the project's success and the kinds of knowledge each group gained through their participation in the project. In doing so the authors consider its wider implications for how history teachers and historians might collaborate in more mutually beneficial ways.