Ending participatory research projects: Entangled temporalities, endy moments and afterlives

Bringing Participatory Research projects to an end poses particular challenges, with scholars often articulating affects of guilt and disappointment at unfinished endings. A mismatch between institutionally defined deadlines, and the relational and political ongoingness of participatory research create contradictory demands. Drawing on three anchor cases, we offer three concepts to support conceptualising and planning for project endings. First, understanding the multiple ‘entangled temporalities’ of participatory research projects, with different time horizons and rhythms, in relations of power and associated affects, helps us analyse the complexity of endings. Second, while formal end-points often clash with participatory temporalities, marking ‘endy moments’ can offer satisfying provisional closures. Third, ideas and networks fostered by a project may reverberate beyond its formal end, through generative, often unpredicted ‘afterlives’. We argue that approaching endings through a lens of multiple temporalities supports co-design of more mutually productive endings, and end by suggesting strategies for rebalancing temporal power.