Knowledge and Power in Collaborative Research: A Reflexive Approach (Louise Phillips, Marianne Kristiansen, Marja Vehviläinen and Ewa Gunnarsson [editors], Routledge Advances in Research Methods Series, London and New York: Routledge, 2012) is the product of collaborative work in the NordForsk Network for the Study of the Dialogic Communication of Research in which many of the research group members have participated.

Collaborative research embraces a multiplicity of practices in which social actors are invited to participate in the research process as co-producers of knowledge. 

But what is actually meant by “co-production” in collaborative research?

Knowledge and Power in Collaborative Research presents a range of critical, reflexive strategies for understanding and tackling the challenges emanating from the tensions that arise in the meeting between different participants, knowledge forms and knowledge interests. The chapters anchor discussion of ethical, epistemological and methodological questions in sustained empirical analyses of cases of collaborative knowledge production.

The book covers diverse theoretical approaches such as dialogic communication theory, actor network theory, poststructuralist writing as inquiry, institutional ethnography, dialogic action research, and pragmatic action research. And the empirical cases span a broad spectrum of empirical fields of social practice: health services, organisational change, research, science communication, environmental communication in intermediary NGO’s, participatory governance in relation to urban planning, and digital communication and virtual worlds.

Contributors: Jørgen Bloch-Poulsen (Aalborg University), Lisbeth Frølunde (Research Group on Dialogic Communication, Roskilde University), Ewa Gunnarsson (Luleå University of Technology), Christina Hee Pedersen (Research Group on Dialogic Communication, Roskilde University), Riikka Homanan (University of Tampere), Maja Horst (University of Copenhagen), Marianne Kristiansen (University of Aalborg), Pauliina Lehtonen (University of Tampere), Ulla-Britt Lilleaas (Agder University College), Agnete Neidel (Roskilde University),  Louise Phillips (Research Group on Dialogic Communication, Roskilde University), Ursula Plesner (Copenhagen Business School), Birgitte Ravn Olesen (Research Group on Dialogic Communication, Roskilde University, Marja Vehviläinen (University of Tampere), Trine Wulf-Andersen (Roskilde University).

For more information about the book, please see Routledge's webpage.