A cultural psychological reflection on collaborative research (Conference Essay)

This essay reports on discussions that took place at a workshop on collaborative research in European cultural psychology. The production of knowledge in social interaction is, for sociocultural psychologists, something that is observed and theorised as it is undertaken by research participants. Researchers less frequently reflect on the social relations through which their own scientific knowledge is produced. The workshop focused on five empirical collaborative research projects and aimed to explore the intellectual significance of the social relations of collaboration. In the course of the workshop, we developed a cultural psychological conceptualisation of collaboration as an institutionally situated interaction between divergent perspectives with a (partially) shared goal. This perspective leads us to consider the value of divergent perspectives in instigating reflexivity and novelty. We present here a framework of dimensions for describing different forms of scientific collaboration which may be useful for researchers planning future collaborations.