Marlot Kuiper

86 Connective Routines making sense of clinical jargon. In this way, I could make better sense of the data, though I never had the feeling the gate-keeper tried to influence my findings in any way. On the contrary, he was always very careful in not providing judgments or personal interpretations: “It’s your story Marlot, it is about what you’ve found.” With hindsight, the role of the gate-keeper thus moved beyond the scope of an ‘informant’ or ‘access provider’. But what would he get out of it?! During the process, I’ve been struggling with this a lot; the gate-keeper put loads of time, energy and intellect in this project, but I was not sure what would come out of it and what he would get fromme in return. We’ve openly discussed this issue, and he always guaranteed me that the only thing he wanted is that I could conduct this research as he just deeply believed in the approach, and thus value of the project. I am deeply grateful for that. The importance of so-called gate-keepers has extensively been described in the academic literature. ‘Importance’ in terms of ‘access’ mostly, but also in terms of providing contextual knowledge. After writing this dissertation, I can inductively add to this, that gate-keepers can also be of great importance beyond the scope of the research project. Gate-keepers can be of great importance in terms of establishing future collaborations, new research projects, and moreover, in terms of new friendships.