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This paper aims to look at the implementation of project-funded research governance and its potential to induce organisational learning on responsible research and innovation (RRI). This paper analysed what types of organisational learning and change can take place within organisations of an Europe-funded project and to what extent. This paper examined whether and how change occurs and how it is shaped and co-produced with other orderings.

The paper is based on materials and evidence collected while working on the internal evaluation of a Horizon 2020-funded project. Analysis of the results of the mixed methods evaluation design was used to characterise occurrences of organisational learning and change.

The authors identified different forms of learning (single-loop learning, double-loop learning, reflexive and reflective learning and situational learning). The extent of learning that could lead to long-lasting organisational change was limited. This was due to the project-based and organisational design, the key-based definition of RRI and the indeterminacy of what constitutes learning and change – both at the level of funding and performing the project. For organisational change to occur, the authors argue for governance mechanisms based on reflexive learning that consider a range of structural conditions and measures.

Organisational learning plays an important role in change processes, which has so far been given too little consideration concerning the governance and implementation of RRI through project-based funding. The authors argue for a restructuring of governance and funding mechanisms to create more space for reflexivity and learning.

This article seeks to provide a fresh perspective on the methodological approach to studying caregiving in a transnational context by analysing, local caregiver’s lifeworld, informal interpreting/translation and professional communication with foreign retirees.

This project explores the complex and multifaceted meanings of everyday objects through diffractive vignettes to illuminate the communicative entanglements that arise between caregivers and foreign retirees receiving care in Thailand. To identify intra-actions in caregiving, we collected data through informal interviews, observations and various artefacts before combining them in a group of potential communicative relationships by creating a narrative summary of situations.

Communicative relationships in the vignettes are multidimensional, with diverse logics underlying choices, rapport formation and communication effectiveness. This premise also illuminates how caregivers perceive and intra-act with their accommodation strategies, considering trust, comfort and comprehension. Our findings were also discussed with the concept of communication accommodation theory.

As an extension of the post-humanist approach to the diffractive reading of vignettes, this study sees its value in studying agent-related informal translation/interpreting and human-to-human relationships.

This paper revolves around the central question: is it possible to do “proper ethnography” without complete participant observation? The authors draw upon a student's experiences of negotiating National Health Service (NHS) ethical approval requirements and access into the student's research field, a British NHS hospital and having to adapt data collection methods for the student's doctoral research. The authors examine some of the positional (insider/outsider, native gone academic), methodological (long-term/interrupted, overt/covert) and contextual challenges that threatened the student's ethnographic study.

The paper draws on reflexive vignettes written during the student's doctorate, capturing significant moments and issues within the student's research.

The authors highlight the temporal, practical, ethical and emotional challenges faced in attempting an ethnography of nursing culture within a highly regulated research environment. Having revealed the student's experience of researching this specific culture and finding ways to overcome these challenges, the authors conclude that the contemporary ethnographer needs to be increasingly flexible, opportunistic and somewhat covert.

The authors argue that it is possible to do “proper” and “good” ethnography without complete participant observation – it is not the method, the observation, that is the essence of ethnography, but whether the researcher achieves real understanding through thick descriptions of the culture that explain “what is really going on here”.

The authors hope to assist doctoral students engage in “good” ethnographic research within (potentially) risk-averse host organisations, such as the NHS, whilst being located in neo-liberal performative academic organisations (Foster, 2017; McCann et al., 2020). The authors wish to contribute to the journal to ensure good ethnography is accessible and achievable to (particularly) doctoral researchers who have to navigate complex challenges exacerbated by pressures in both the host and home cultures. The authors wish to see doctoral researchers survive and thrive in producing good organisational ethnographies to ensure such research is published (Watson 2012), cognisant of the pressures and targets to publish in top-ranked journals (Jones et al. 2020).

Having identified key challenges, the authors demonstrate how these can be addressed to ensure ethnography remains accessible to and achievable for, doctoral researchers, particularly in healthcare organisations. The authors conclude that understanding can be attained in what they propose as a hybrid form of “propportune” ethnography that blends the aim of the essence of “proper” anthropological approaches with the “opportunism” of contemporary data collection solutions.

Qualitative research is well-established and widely adopted across a range of disciplines; however, there is little discussion of the teaching of qualitative research methods. What engagements there are primarily focus on methods rather than core concepts that inform ethical and effective use of those approaches. “Subjectivity” and “reflexivity” are pervasive concepts taken up in numerous textbooks, handbooks, and journal guidelines. But, despite being an expected and critical aspect of qualitative methodologies, few scholars consider how researchers might learn to engage with these necessary aspects effectively.

This is a conceptual paper written from the authors' experiences teaching qualitative research to graduate students at the master's and doctoral levels.

This conceptual paper offers an andragogical discussion of how novice and student researchers might learn to consider the concepts of reflexivity and subjectivity. Additionally, it considers how the deep and critical reflection inherent in both subjectivity and reflexivity are valuable aspects in extending discussions and applications of qualitative research in various disciplines.

This paper offers a fresh and unique consideration of teaching novice researchers how to practice reflexivity and examine their subjectivities using the work of Alan Peshkin as a model.