Absent Patients: The Discursive Positioning of Patients in Multistakeholder Research Collaborations

This article focuses on the discursive construction of patients as absent stakeholders in health research collaboration. More specifically, the article shows how patients are positioned as absent actors in multistakeholder collaboration between universities, companies, and non-profit organizations (NPOs). Today, both public universities and companies are expected to partner and engage with patients in their research activities. However, little is known about how health researchers and their stakeholders understand the patient role in their routine research processes. The article draws from the literature on research collaboration with stakeholders, the discursive construction of stakeholders, and positioning theory, asking how health researchers and their stakeholders construct patients and their agency in their narratives about research collaboration. The article is based on data collected through 44 open-ended interviews with health researchers in two Finnish universities, as well as their company and NPO collaborators. The findings illustrate how patients are positioned as absent, passive actors—resources and objects of research—rather than active partners and agentic actors in research collaboration. The study contributes to research collaboration literature by illustrating discursive positions of how one group of actors—here, patients—are positioned as an absent actor in the context of health research collaboration.