A farewell to the lone hero researcher: team research and writing

Abstract

Criminology 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.

Rap, Islam and Jihadi Cool: The attractions of the Western jihadi subculture

“…While some may argue that researchers should focus on that which is ‘close to home’, we believe instead that it is particularly important to study those experiences and cultural expressions that differ from one’s own. Such research requires researchers to reflect continuously on positionality and the power dimension of research (Larsen, 2020) and is arguably ideally, but not necessarily, done in close research collaborations with the communities studied (Sandberg and Rojas, forthcoming). Trying to get a grasp of cultural and social diversity and variance however, is the only way we can increase cross-cultural understandings and cumulatively contribute to knowledge of complex and increasingly global social phenomena.…”