The workings of norms and pursuit of inclusion in practices of peer reviewing: –destabilizing ideas of quality

In the panel, we will offer a reflexive dialogue “on the spot” on the becomings of criteria of quality in the evaluation of contemporary qualitative research. We (the three panelists) share an emphasis on the situatedness of knowledge production and the importance of the inclusion of multiple and different knowledge forms. We also subscribe to the principle that knowledge should be ethically situated, meaningful, generative and if by any means possible relevant for the persons involved or concerned with the themes we work with as researchers. Prior to the congress, we will each write a short text on what we personally consider the most important criteria by which we evaluate the works of others and our own. The texts will include examples from our own research and current debates on research quality/ excellence. We will set out to ‘liberate’ our criteria of quality from the grips of “taken for grantedness” and fixed schematic categories when it comes to argument, analytical accounts, relevance and results.
Methodologically, the panel will take as its point of departure reactions mobilized by close readings of each other’s texts, based on the question: 'What made the biggest impression on you when you read the two other papers and why? We will use our reflections at the panel session as a launching-pad for dialogue with the other participants through a number of provocative, invocative quotations and questions.
In other words, the aim of the panel is to make visible and destabilize a range of dimensions that each of us in our practices take for granted as measures of ‘quality’ when we evaluate the work of others and ourselves.