Paper short abstract:

Even though collaborative research has become increasingly valued in various fields of the academia, only little attention has been given to research assistants, especially in so-called North-South collaborations. Here, we discuss the experiences of a Beninese and a Finnish research assistant.

Paper long abstract:

The recruitment of research assistants is routine and has a long history in 'North-South' research collaborations. However, little attention has been given to research assistants in studies on collaborations. Calls for research that is more tuned to respond to power asymmetries in knowledge production are growing, as are discussions on what could decolonizing research mean in practice.

In this paper, drawing from our field diaries and memory work after the ‘collaborative moment’, we discuss the experienced ambivalences in a ‘North-South’ collaboration funded by a Finnish university: a social scientific research project that studied a vaccine trial. From the viewpoints of a Finnish PhD researcher in sociology and a Beninese anthropologist, we pose questions such as: In 'North-South' collaborative settings, how does collaboration concretely play out in everyday practices/what does it mean? How do qualitative field methods and collaboration fit together? What might ‘decolonization’ mean in such a context, in the everyday (research) practices, by and for whom? How are colonial habits of knowledge production resisted or reproduced, how does epistemic disobedience become (im)possible?

By discussing our positionings as research assistants, we pay attention to both, the tensions in qualitative field methods and research assistance in a 'North-South' collaboration, and the enabling effects of such a mode of knowledge production. Though not bypassing how global structures of knowledge production are at play and generate epistemic exclusions, we suggest that such structures cannot be taken as all explanatory of (habits of) knowledge production in North-South collaborations, in the use of research assistants.