‘Piggy in the Middle’: The Liminality of the Contract Researcher in Funded ‘Collaborative’ Research

This paper considers the challenges faced by contract researchers employed oninterdisciplinary, cross institutional research projects. It argues that currentfunding requirements and a general fashion for ‘collaborative’ research haveproduced growing numbers of contract researchers employed to carry out otherpeople's research. These contract researchers are caught, like a ‘piggy in themiddle’, between disciplinary boundaries, geographic sites, institutionalcultures, theoretical incommensurabilities and competing grantholders. Theirposition is made all the more difficult because such collaborations, inpractice, often blur the sense of ‘ownership’ and therefore responsibility forthe research, leaving the contract researcher responsible for operationalisingand undertaking the work, but with little acknowledgement of their commitment.The paper includes a number of suggestions for dealing with suchdifficulties.