Abstract
Nursing and research coexist in a ‘troubled’ relationship. The culture of nursing and the discourses of research together generate tensions and conflicts which often work to constrain nurses’ attempts to engage in research activity. In this paper I attempt to expose possible reasons why this might be so. Drawing on critical feminist post-structuralist theories and recent empirical research with clinical nurses some of the ‘challenges’ to thinking and doing research in nursing are given voice and brought to critical expression.