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The purpose of the paper is to show power mechanisms of in- and exclusion in moments where certain participants appeared to be othered in two collaborative research and development projects in a healthcare setting.

The paper contributes to critical-reflexive analyses of reflexive processes within collaborative knowledge production. The authors use an analytical framework combining Bakhtin and Foucault to investigate processes of inclusion and exclusion in the interplay between dominant and subordinated voices in a moment-by-moment analysis of two incidents from interdisciplinary workshops.

The analysis illuminates how differences between voices challenge participants’ reflexive awareness and lead to the reproduction of contextual power and knowledge hierarchies and the concomitant silencing of particular participants. Thus, the findings draw attention to the complex and ethical nature of collaborative knowledge production.

To invite researchers to be reflexive about the complex, situated and emergent character of reflexive processes and consider ethics to be a critical stance that encourages continuous reflection and critique of collaborative knowledge production.

To show the importance of not sweeping incidents in which participants are othered “under the carpet” in collaborative research. To present an analytical framework for analysing the contextual and emergent nature of collaborative research processes and discuss the ethical conundrums, which arise in the research process.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ethical complexity and dilemmas, which arise in the co-production of knowledge between researchers and other participants.

The starting point for the paper is a narrative from a conference the authors attended where the authors, as researchers, found themselves on slippery and emotionally charged ground. Using a critical, reflexive approach informed by post-structuralism, the ambition was to deconstruct gaps between rhetoric and practice and critique normative understandings of the nature of ethically sound co-production processes in collaborative research. More specifically, at the conference, the authors sought to expose and discuss the gap between the good intentions and the own practice as researchers in a collaborative research project at a major hospital. However, instead of reflexive discussions with the research community, the authors experienced that the conduct was criticized and categorized as unethical practice.

Instead of omitting sensitive phenomena from the research process, the authors argue that it is an ethical imperative to investigate these phenomena in order to gain insight into what is at stake in dialogical, reflexive processes not only between researchers and research participants—but also between researchers in the research community. An awareness of the emergent nature of power relations in all processes of knowledge production may strengthen the practical validity of “co-produced” knowledge in action research.

A poststructuralist perspective on collaborative research processes reveals normative expectations regarding ethical research practice and provides insight into the tensions in collaborative research that arise irrespective of the individual competence (or not) of the researcher.