The proposed symposium reports on aspects of the process of researching the relationship between knowledge and policy, as part of a five year European Commission funded project on the relationship between knowledge and policy in selected European countries, with reference to both the Health and Education sectors (see the project website for further details: www.knowandpol.eu). The symposium will explore and discuss some of the methodological issues (understood in their broadest sense to include issues of power, gender and control) that arise in policy research, with particular reference to the problems and challenges of obtaining accounts of policy from powerful actors, and to the nature of the relationship between researcher and ‘researched’ in this particular version of policy work. We will be comparing experiences in the education sector across a range of contexts (France, Scotland, Romania, Belgium and Hungary), looking at issues of access, negotiation of relationships, and issues arising around withdrawal and exit from the researcher-researched relationship in these different contexts, drawing on theoretical resources that explore issues of meaning-making, power and gender in the practice of policy research. Methodology: The symposium draws on the project methodology (case studies and interviews) and on established literature (for example Ball 1994, Gewirtz and Ozga 1994, Walford 1994, Lilleker 2002), as well as on relevant  literature on national policy-making (for example De Vissher and Varone 2004, Mangez 2009) on discussions of power and gender in obtaining insider or elite accounts (Bogner et al 2009, Kezar 2002) and to the contexts of knowledge production and their effects (Bongrand et al 2005) Conclusions: we argue that interviews are not similar events in different European contexts, and that the comparison of cultures and contexts of interviewing is an important dimension of comparative policy research.