Inclusive research with communities and people in unfavourable societal positions has long sought to foster collaborative knowledge production. Notwithstanding the progress made – particularly in action-oriented research – ensuring that participants’ agency is fully supported and that research translates into tangible outcomes remains a complex endeavour. Reflecting on a co-creative research project with socio-economically vulnerable participants in Brussels (2018–2022), this article suggests how the challenge of meaningful collaboration can be navigated by effectively engaging with participants’ agency, emphasizing their decision-making power, ethical pluralism, practical needs, and the concrete pathways for (long-term) change. Using Participatory Agency Research (PAR), the benefits of deliberative, participant-driven discussions are explored through the complexities of the research process. This includes negotiating the reasons why many participants initially declined involvement, the necessary sensitivity to develop trust and overcome this, and the methodological reflexivity required to better account for participants’ needs in context-specific ways – not least the specific complications of undertaking collaboration at the height of the pandemic. This article contributes to ongoing discussions on how methodologies can be adapted, and reflects on what makes inclusion meaningfully ‘inclusive’ from the participants’ perspective.
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