Researchers and universities are increasingly called upon by policy-makers when it comes to addressing the manifold societal challenges of modernity. To this end, tertiary funding in the academic sector has been a key policy steering mechanism, aiming to involve academia in societal problem solving with the goal of achieving a social impact through research – not least by setting specific agendas such as encouraging transdiciplinary and participatory approaches. Researchers are called to adopt these policy-driven expectations when applying for external funding – a process that is often not well reflected by acadmics themselves, and that has yet to be studied more thoroughly in order to understand its implications for research practices, projects, and beyond.

This paper suggests a methodological framework to trace the ways in which researchers navigate these external expectations, by analysing the organisation of project-based research as a collective activity, examining how interacting collective subjects are constituted on multiple levels within the organisation (see Nissen 2018). We employ a critique of ideology, analysing the collective sense-making within the organisation to reveal the dialectical interrelation between programmatic strategies  and ideals on the one hand, and the actual everyday practice on the other hand. We thereby show how external expectations are negotiated within the organisation through processes of collective subjectivation and objectification. The ways in which research projects within universities are constituted can thereby be examined as a case of the wider phenomenon of educational and social organisations reacting to societal problems through third-party funded projects.

The suggested framework expands the predominant Foucauldian subject-theoretical lens based on the critical self-observation by theorists of subjectivation, “that this perspective risks reifying not only certain subject positions, but individuality itself as an unspoken reference point of the analysis” (Langer/Wrana 2024, p. 56, own transl.). Conversely, attempts to overcome the methodological focus on the individual by grasping the collective aspect of human activity through organisational theories still fail to account for other forms of collective activity beyond the specific characteristics of the organisation, as it is institutionalized in modern, capitalist societies (Türk 1995, p. 16).

Some promising approaches have been proposed that emphasise the collective as a dedicated unit of analysis in practice research (Alkemeyer et al. 2018; Nissen 2018; Schmachtel 2023). Expanding on these ideas and drawing on cultural-historical activity theory, we propose a critical perspective on processes of collective subjectivation and objectification, particularly accounting for their performative and socio-material dimensions (Schmachtel 2023; Nissen 2005, 2012, 2018). By analysing collective human activity based on the institutionalised contexts of action that are reconstituted anew in any given social practice, these contexts appear (1) as complex, multi-layered relations of collectives participating in each other (Nissen 2005, see also Schmachtel 2023, p. 112). The interrelations between the different layers of collectivity are further (2) mediated by the objects – both material and discursive – of the respective practices. Objectification, as the flip side of subjectivation, is thus “inherent to [...] practice, as the production of objective – collective and material – meaning that in turn forms who we are as subjects” (Nissen 2005, p. 153). Following Nissen, we develop an understanding of this “situated common sense” (Nissen 2012, p. 152) of collective practice as ideology (ibid.), the analysis of which allows us to address the “systematic inconsistency between certain ideas and the social practice they inform” (Jaeggi 2009, p. 68) and thus, by way of a performative, immanent and affirmative critique (Nissen 2020; see also Jaeggi 2009) to reveal the unquestioned self-evident truths through which (collective) subjects are interpellated and thereby constituted as such (Althusser 1971: 170-176).

Our case study examines a government-funded joint research project, which aims to explore and reduce educational barriers for children of primary school age in disadvantaged urban and rural communities, following a transdisciplinary and participatory research agenda. We employ an ethnographic approach to explore the collective epistemic practices of ‘doing transfer’ between the researchers, practitioners from various educational institutions, and local government employees participating in the research-practice-partnership. Drawing on key findings from an analysis of both the funding guidelines and the project’s grant application, we analyse an ethnographic passage to map the complex multi-level architecture of the participating collectives within the project. Our methodological approach builds on an integrative combination of discourse analysis and ethnographic methods as proposed e.g. by Ott (2011, 2015). By introducing the concepts of ideology and collective subjectivation, we develop a deeper understanding of the institutional and socio-material contexts that shape the observed practices, extending the scope of empirical research beyond individual situations (see Kalthoff 2018).

Through this methodological approach and case study, we conceptualise practice research as a ‘critique of ideology’. Highlighting both the discursive as well as the socio-material dimensions in the organisation of the collaborative research project, we explore the subjectivation of various (sub-)collectives participating in the project’s transfer activities. The analysis thereby reveals both ideological coherences as well as refractions with regards to the programmatic ideals set forth in the project’s grant application and the corresponding funding guidelines. Focusing on the ideological aspects of the project’s collective ‘common sense’ allows us to elaborate how collectives work to navigate conflicting interpellations arising from differing institutional requirements shaping the project’s context of action. We elucidate how collective agency is gained through a contradictory process that entails both the disavowal and the incorporation of external expectations. We conceptualise researchers as active participants in these processes, reflecting on our own role in processes of collective subjectivation in which we participate by turning observed practices into objects of study (Schmachtel & Nissen 2022).

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