Succeeding with interactive research: How to manage research with and about society

Abstract

Increasingly, social science research is carried out in collaboration with partners outside universities, yet research methodology is lacking on how to manoeuvre in a terrain where multiple actors set expectations for research. This article conceptualizes interactive research as research with and about society, and provides a set of systematic reflections on how to manage opposing pressures, tensions and dilemmas in interactive research projects. We formulate and address three major interactive research management tasks: ensuring continual commitment from external stakeholders, maintaining the capacity for critique and ensuring that scientific standards are met. Based on our own experience and theories of interactive governance, network management and collaborative leadership, as well as on existing methodological literature, we provide guidance and suggest concrete tools and methods for performing the tasks in order to avoid the pitfalls and harvest the gains of interactive research.