diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 8ab2deaa0..ffa85cb31 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -64,7 +64,8 @@ Authors@R: c(
   person("Ben","Schwen",           role="ctb"),
   person("Tony","Fischetti",       role="ctb"),
   person("Ofek","Shilon",          role="ctb"),
-  person("Vadim","Khotilovich",    role="ctb"))
+  person("Vadim","Khotilovich",    role="ctb"),
+  person("Hadley","Wickham",       role="ctb"))
 Depends: R (>= 3.1.0)
 Imports: methods
 Suggests: bit64 (>= 4.0.0), bit (>= 4.0.4), curl, R.utils, xts, nanotime, zoo (>= 1.8-1), yaml, knitr, rmarkdown, markdown
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 5d6a7da3e..2e0cef06a 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -93,6 +93,8 @@
 
 13. `fifelse()` now coerces logical `NA` to other types and the `na` argument supports vectorized input, [#4277](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/issues/4277) [#4286](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/issues/4286) [#4287](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/issues/4287). Thanks to @michaelchirico and @shrektan for reporting, and @shrektan for implementing.
 
+14. `.datatable.aware` is now recognized in the calling environment in addition to the namespace of the calling package, [dtplyr#184](https://github.com/tidyverse/dtplyr/issues/184). Thanks to Hadley Wickham for the idea and PR.
+
 ## BUG FIXES
 
 1. `by=.EACHI` when `i` is keyed but `on=` different columns than `i`'s key could create an invalidly keyed result, [#4603](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/issues/4603) [#4911](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/issues/4911). Thanks to @myoung3 and @adamaltmejd for reporting, and @ColeMiller1 for the PR. An invalid key is where a `data.table` is marked as sorted by the key columns but the data is not sorted by those columns, leading to incorrect results from subsequent queries.
diff --git a/R/cedta.R b/R/cedta.R
index 7ace21007..5d0a60c10 100644
--- a/R/cedta.R
+++ b/R/cedta.R
@@ -18,11 +18,18 @@ cedta.pkgEvalsUserCode = c("gWidgetsWWW","statET","FastRWeb","slidify","rmarkdow
 #   .datatable.aware = TRUE
 # which makes them data.table-aware optionally and possibly variably.
 # http://stackoverflow.com/a/13131555/403310
+# .datatable.aware is not in data.table's namespace and it is not intended to ever be added here. Otherwise
+#   package authors could set it using assignInNamespace and then not revert its value properly which would
+#   cause subsequent calls from other packages to fail.
 
 # cedta = Calling Environment Data.Table-Aware
 cedta = function(n=2L) {
   # Calling Environment Data Table Aware
-  ns = topenv(parent.frame(n))
+  env = parent.frame(n)
+  if (isTRUE(env$.datatable.aware)) {  # dtplyr 184
+    return(TRUE)
+  }
+  ns = topenv(env)
   if (!isNamespace(ns)) {
     # e.g. DT queries at the prompt (.GlobalEnv) and knitr's eval(,envir=globalenv()) but not DF[...] inside knitr::kable v1.6
     return(TRUE)
@@ -47,4 +54,3 @@ cedta = function(n=2L) {
   }
   ans
 }
-