This observation from indigenous scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith about research in the twenty-first century has special resonance for participatory research. As participatory researchers, we pursue research and other activities with communities (or traditional research ‘subjects’) as collaborating partners, with the primary goal of working towards positive changes on issues identified by the collective (Kindon et al., 2007). We try to engage in all aspects of research-research questions, the choice and design of methods, the analysis of data, the presentation of findings, and the pursuit of follow up action-as collaborative projects which require negotiation between the different parties. So the complex challenge of negotiating ‘ethics’–as multiple and contested, and whether in institutional or everyday spaces–is central to our research process and inquiry.

This special issue provides an opening on the messy, behind-closed-door conversations we participate in as we negotiate the ethical quandaries that riddle our research, writing, and theorizing. It grew out of a desire to excavate the ‘tricky ground’we stand on as participatory researchers grappling with the politics of collaboration, positionality, accountability, and responsibility (Smith, 2007). We articulate these questions within the framework of ‘ethics’ in order to engage in the thorny dilemmas that participatory research presents for theory, practice, and institutional policies. Teasing out the critical issues that participatory research raises for research ethics, we hope to contribute to the ongoing public conversation about the obligations, challenges, and tensions involved in engaging in collaborative research towards social change (Cameron and Gibson, 2005; Kindon et al., 2007; Manzo and Brightbill, 2007), and to recent debates around institutional ethicsF 2 F.