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Governing Researchers through Public Involvement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2021

ARIS KOMPOROZOS-ATHANASIOU Open the ORCID record for ARIS KOMPOROZOS-ATHANASIOU [Opens in a new window] ,
JONATHAN PAYLOR  and
CHRISTOPHER MCKEVITT
ARIS KOMPOROZOS-ATHANASIOU
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Sociology, UCL Social Research Institute, University College London, 18 Woburn Square, LondonWC1H 0NR, United Kingdom email: [email protected]
JONATHAN PAYLOR
Affiliation:
PhD Candidate, School of Population Health & Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, King’s College London, Addison House, LondonSE1 1UL
CHRISTOPHER MCKEVITT
Affiliation:
Professor of Social Sciences & Health, School of Population Health & Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, King’s College London, Addison House, LondonSE1 1UL
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Abstract

This paper focuses on recent developments in UK health research policy, which place new pressures on researchers to address issues of accountability and impact through the implementation of patient and public involvement (PPI). We draw on an in-depth interview study with 20 professional researchers, and we analyse their experiences of competing for research funding, focusing on PPI as a process of professional research governance. We unearth dominant professional narratives of scepticism and alternative identifications in their enactment of PPI policy. We argue that such narratives and identifications evidence a resistance to ways in which patient involvement has been institutionalised and to the resulting subject-positions researchers are summoned to take up. We show that the new subjectivities emerging in this landscape of research governance as increasingly disempowered, contradictory and fraught with unresolved tensions over the ethical dimensions of the researchers’ own professional identities.

Keywords

health researchresearch governancepolicy enactmentpatient and public involvementprofessional subjectivity
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , April 2022 , pp. 268 - 283
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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