Identity and power in co-produced activist research

Methodologies such as participatory, feminist, or co-produced research aim to democratise research practice. These kinds of methodologies are devised and embraced by activists as they work to shift the balance of power. Activists and researchers can be uneasy bedfellows, and trying to be both activist and researcher can lead to identity confusion and communication problems. Yet within democratic research practice, researchers and others are often required to enact multiple identities. This article will highlight some of the relationships between activism, research, identity and power. An account of an incident that occurred during a piece of co-produced activist evaluation research, which threatened to undermine that research, illustrates some of the relationships between the enactment of multiple identities and power imbalances in the practice of co-produced activist research. The theoretical work of Karen Barad is used as a lens to help elucidate the complexity of this phenomenon and identify what, and how, we can learn from such incidents.