Individual transnational researchers and transnational societies: The transnationalisation of individuals, and the individualisation of the transnational

This chapter considers the relations of individuals, in the guise of individual transnational researchers, and transnational societies, with special reference to transnational research and projects. ‘The transnational’ is used here as the central motif for writing, reflecting, remembering and paying tribute to Marina Blagojević Hughson. This focus includes how different framings, worldviews and disciplinary understandings of the transnational, and indeed the semiperipheral, are mediated and embodied in and by individual researchers and researches. A multi-level, interactional approach to theory/practice is outlined, considered in relation to the work of and collaborations with Marina Blagojević Hughson. In particular, the chapter examines the interactions of both the empirical and normative-philosophical-political framings of ‘the transnational’, within which individuals live and work, and which construct individuals, with the lives and social constructions of transnational researchers, the operation of transnational research projects and methods, and the formation of substantive transnational fields and focuses. The final section discusses key cross-cutting themes recognised here as important in Marina Blagojević Hughson’s work and collaborations, as well as for understanding the relations of transnational individuals and transnational societies, and developing transnational feminist research. These are in brief: cosmopolitanism, without élitism: the spatial and the temporal as contexts; contradiction, ambivalence and hybridisation; development of Critical Studies on Men and Masculinities; materiality; knowledge and knowledge production; and their interconnections.