What supports or destabilises the participation of community researchers? Exploring affective flows in co-production processes.

Participatory or co-production approaches have gained popularity, including within research on food system transformation. Reasons for this include complexity in food systems challenges, multiple possible pathways to transformation, and the necessity for diverse food system actors to engage and make changes. Some also emphasise social justice motivations.However, co-production is messy and challenging, and scholarship highlights potential dark sides and harms. We used a new materialist lens and creative methods to carry out a ‘minor’ sociological inquiry into the experiences of 12 local residents engaged in transdisciplinary food systems research. They have been employed, trained and supported to be Community Food Researchers (CFRs) (Pettinger et al., 2023), co-producing research in their own communities as part of the 5-year project FoodSEqual. Our aim was to explore what factors supported the groups to come together and persist over time to achieve positive outcomes.The research process involved new materialist theory, creative interview methods, poetic inquiry, collage, and sociological fiction. It centered ‘reflexive participant collaboration’ (Motulsky, 2021) meaning findings and conclusions were analysed and shaped through ongoing dialogue with, and participation of, CFRs. Our results offer recommendations for those designing or delivering co-production processes to manage supportive and destabilizing factors. We also propose that research could support existing community development efforts.