Abstract
AbstractCriminology have long celebrated the lone hero researcher. Doing and writing up research in solitude has been the key to academic success and institutional promotions. However, the social sciences in general have increasingly moved towards more collaborative ways of doing research, and co-authorship has become more common. In this study, we summarize and discuss the pros and cons of working in teams when doing qualitative research. Drawing upon our own experiences from Mexico and Norway, we argue for a radical approach to team research and co-authorship, which we describe as team writing. Most importantly, we suggest opening up to include stakeholders and community partners, thus challenging the borders between researchers and those researched. This is arguably particularly important for research done in the academic, geographical and topical periphery of criminology. Team research and writing answers some of the critique of power inequality, representativity and lack of diversity in contemporary academic research. We also believe that team research, and writing, can make criminological research more multifaceted, reflexive, and thus better.
Highlights
The academic field comes with both prestige and power, and a constant struggle to achieve them (Bourdieu, 2008)
Team research and co-authorship, or team writing, can be a prolific alternative to the lone hero researcher. These forms of doing research have become increasingly common in criminology and include well-established forms of collaboration in academia, with colleagues, PhD students, and research assistants; but can include stakeholders and community partners who are not necessarily scholars
Team research and writing can be one such alternative, and we argue that it should be included in the methodological repertoire of qualitative research in criminology
Summary
The academic field comes with both prestige and power, and a constant struggle to achieve them (Bourdieu, 2008). Team research and co-authorship, or team writing, can be a prolific alternative to the lone hero researcher These forms of doing research have become increasingly common in criminology and include well-established forms of collaboration in academia, with colleagues, PhD students, and research assistants; but can include stakeholders and community partners who are not necessarily scholars. Such approaches can arguably empower social actors, challenge the borders between scholars and research subjects, and question the alienating distinctions between academic and other forms of knowledge Issues such as positionality, power imbalance, and questions about dissemination and ownership have been debated widely in methodological and colonialism literature (Alonso et al, 2018; Leyva et al, 2018; Spivak, 1988). We want to invite qualitative criminologists to an open debate on with whom to do research and who to include as authors on academic publications
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