Fardous Bahbouh, PhD researcher in equality and political economy

Industry–academic collaboration is often framed as mutually beneficial, offering impact, stakeholder engagement, and practical relevance. Yet such collaborations are rarely neutral exchanges of expertise. Drawing on my experience as a publicly funded doctoral researcher, awarded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) through the White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities (WRoCAH), to conduct research investigating equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) within outsourced public service interpreting (PSI) in the UK, this account examines the ethical and structural tensions that can arise when academic inquiry intersects with commercial interests. This reflexive analysis is situated within critical political economy and EDI scholarship, which emphasise the importance of researcher positionality as a lens for understanding power and ethics in knowledge production. I have also written a detailed critique of calls for more industry collaboration, such as in The Routledge Handbook of the Translation Industry (2025), which readers can find here.

Critical political economy highlights how institutional interests, material conditions, and asymmetries of power shape the production and validation of knowledge. Similarly, EDI scholarship emphasises that inequality is embedded in organisational practices, governance structures, and market logics rather than arising solely from individual attitudes. From these perspectives, industry collaboration must be approached with critical distance, recognising the potential for conflicts between commercial imperatives and equality-oriented research.

Structural Constraints in PSI Research

In the UK, PSI is largely outsourced to private language service providers (LSPs), embedding interpreters’ work within neoliberal market structures. Existing research demonstrates that PSI is characterised by systemic precarity, including unstable income, limited employment protections, and restricted career progression. Institutional narratives often individualise responsibility, attributing structural problems to interpreters rather than to commissioning or governance arrangements.

During my collaboration, the industry partner prioritised framing challenges in terms of external factors, such as migration policies or the cost of education, despite the absence of evidence linking these factors to recruitment bottlenecks. This framing risked normalising current practices and deflecting attention from structural inequalities, creating both practical and ethical constraints on my ability to pursue critical inquiry.

Power Asymmetries and Ethical Tensions

As an early-career researcher, I experienced a significant imbalance of power relative to the industry partner. My attempts to critically engage with assumptions, challenge narratives, and highlight systemic inequalities were often dismissed as “perception” or “misunderstanding.” I was repeatedly advised to manage my bias, without any explanation of what I was purportedly biased against, despite my argument being grounded in the principles of just and favourable conditions and pay enshrined in Article 23 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Throughout the eight-month collaboration, I was confronted with statements that illustrated the limits imposed on reflexive critique. These included: “You are not an activist here,” “You are not a passionate advocate here,” “You need to learn to think like a researcher,” “The funding is not for this,” “You need to control your urges to find solutions,” “Talks about pay and working conditions are happening somewhere else,” “We must remember that translation companies do complex work!” and “We must remember it’s a hugely complex procurement landscape…” These directives made clear that critical engagement—especially around issues such as pay, working conditions, and structural inequality—was constrained by the institutional and commercial priorities of the industry partner.

Within this imbalance of power, my awareness that I retained authorship and analytical responsibility for the research became an important source of resilience. Knowing that I was ultimately accountable for how the research was framed and written allowed me to maintain a sense of intellectual autonomy, even as my contributions were constrained within the collaboration

To manage the pressure and preserve critical distance, I made deliberate choices about how I engaged. I increasingly avoided meetings and relied on written communication, which provided space for reflection and reduced the immediacy of institutional pressure. These strategies were not acts of withdrawal but forms of boundary-setting that enabled me to continue the research ethically and with analytical clarity. Such practices reflect how early-career researchers may exercise constrained agency within structurally unequal collaborations, highlighting the affective and relational dimensions of power in knowledge production. I also held firmly to my belief that my research should contribute to the public good, particularly as it is publicly funded.

The ethical tension reached a climax when I was told – in writing- that I am allowing my situated knowledge of PSI to override my critical thinking, as if critical thinking could exist without knowledge, relying only on assumptions or propaganda! In response, I requested a three-month break from the project, and during that period, the collaboration ended. I then continued my research independently, carrying out an equality inquiry with full academic integrity.

More than two years later, I am still awaiting a response from my university on whether a formal conflict of interest occurred. To prevent similar challenges for future researchers, I have requested an internal review to evaluate how collaborations are structured and governed, particularly when research outcomes may affect labour rights of a highly racialised and feminised workforce.

Reflections and Implications

From a critical political economy perspective, the asymmetries experienced are not incidental but reflect broader structural relations between labour and capital, and between knowledge producers and commercial stakeholders. Early-career researchers are especially vulnerable, with incentives to maintain relationships, secure funding, or achieve institutional recognition often constraining reflexive critique. Recognising these dynamics is essential for understanding how collaboration can shape the production of knowledge in ways that reinforce existing hierarchies.

This reflexive account is also motivated by concerns about scholarly representations of the translation and interpreting industry. For example, The Routledge Handbook of the Translation Industry (2025) contains multiple ethical blind spots, potentially normalising current industry practices while downplaying structural challenges faced by translators and interpreters. As Hanna Risku briefly notes in her remark to the roundtable discussion in the last chapter of the book, maintaining critical distance from industry actors is essential. I strongly believe that without adequate critical engagement and objective analysis, we can’t preserve academic independence, exercise rigorous critique, and prevent corporate capture of academic institutions.

Conclusion

Ethical tensions in industry–academic collaborations are inseparable from structural power dynamics. Reflexivity is not only a methodological tool but an ethical imperative: recognising power asymmetries, advocating for transparency, and preserving critical independence are central to producing research that is both analytically rigorous and socially responsible. Institutional mechanisms should support early-career researchers in navigating these challenges, ensuring that collaboration does not inadvertently reinforce structural inequalities in labour and knowledge production.