Researching Phenomenal Practices: - Methodological considerations for hunting the ghostly concept of interprofessionalism as phenomenon

Interprofessionalism is a concept that, with the organizational becoming of University Colleges (UC’s) in Denmark (2008), has been charged with promises for a brighter tomorrow for the welfare state. Usually recognized as a type of collaboration across profession or common knowledge, interprofessionalism is said to have positive effects on work on complex welfare issues (Zwarenstein and Reeves 2009; Edwards 2010; Paradis and Reeves 2012).

In the 1990´s there were around 120 independent higher educational organizations in Denmark that offered professional bachelor-programs. In 2008 these had been fusioned into 7 UC’s. I’ve been doing ethnography in a UC from 2010-2014, and here interprofessionalism has emerged as phenomenon (Barad 2007; Barad 2010) in entanglement with political pro-fusion debates, as argument for the creation of collaborations between staff, as ideal for educational activities across programs, and as visions for organizational developments and buildings of new state-of-the-art campuses (Sauzet 2011). Thus interprofessionalism seems to emerge as phenomenon in entanglement with organizational becomings.

Working with concepts as phenomena, understood as entangled intra-actions between a mutually emergent ‘it’ and ‘I’ (Barad 2007, 128), my research strategy has become attuned towards both producing and navigating in mess; Mess where both ‘it’ and ‘I’ have engaged in co-constitutive practices of hunting and haunting. For following a concept as phenomenon, is rather like hunting ghosts. Sometimes you see it, sometimes you don’t. Mostly, you’re the only one that feels its presence, and sometimes you haven’t noticed it until somebody screams its name. Following a concept is researching presences, absences, and the unheeded mundane material-discursive practices of educational organizations. It’s assembling the unassimilable and allowing research to emerge in mess (Law 2004; Kofoed 2007).

In my paper I will discuss: How can we work with methodological research criteria (Khawaja 2010), whilst hunting ghost-like, messy and emergent concepts as phenomena?