Paper long abstract:

This paper takes the strands of change encountered by technoscientific communities highlighted in the call for papers, namely 'top-down' research strategies and 'anti-silo' desires, as dilemmatic to individual researchers. Top-down research strategies are dilemmatic because researchers are expected to fulfil expectations from funding bodies and evaluation committees, but also from the academic community. Anti-silo desires are dilemmatic because interdisciplinary work is sometimes framed positively, but sometimes as not as rigorous as discipline-based work. Under these conditions researchers have to negotiate their identities in order to be taken as rigorous, coherent, accountable and responsible, addressing different groups' demands. This paper draws on concepts from narrative-discursive analysis (Taylor & Littleton, 2006), including ideological dilemmas (Billig et al., 1988), canonical narratives (Bruner, 1990), and trouble positions (Wetherell, 1998) to explore the identity work of researchers from a British university engaged in interdisciplinary projects such as zooarchaeology, mathematical neuroscience, bioinformatics, and STS. Researchers were interviewed between 2012 and 2013 about their careers and their experiences with interdisciplinary work. The findings suggest that some researchers achieve rigour, accountability and responsibility distancing themselves from what is identified here as the 'canonical narrative of the single discipline specialist' while others try to adhere to it. Furthermore, different ideological dilemmas are identified and named here as 'openness and rigour' dilemma, 'effort and reward' dilemma, 'individualism and collectivism' dilemma, and 'equality and expertise' dilemma. The canonical narrative and the ideological dilemmas create some 'trouble positions' that researchers may or may not be able to repair in their accounts.