This paper considers the challenges faced by contract researchers employed on
interdisciplinary, cross institutional research projects. It argues that current
funding requirements and a general fashion for ‘collaborative’ research have
produced growing numbers of contract researchers employed to carry out other
people's research. These contract researchers are caught, like a ‘piggy in the
middle’, between disciplinary boundaries, geographic sites, institutional
cultures, theoretical incommensurabilities and competing grantholders. Their
position is made all the more difficult because such collaborations, in
practice, often blur the sense of ‘ownership’ and therefore responsibility for
the research, leaving the contract researcher responsible for operationalising
and undertaking the work, but with little acknowledgement of their commitment.
The paper includes a number of suggestions for dealing with such
difficulties.
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