Trust Within and Across Boundaries: Conceptual Challenges and Empirical Insights Title: Making Sense of Trust Within and Across Boundaries Authors:

Recent calls have been placed for researchers to consider trust within wider theoretical conceptualizations, and in doing so, undertake a ‘reality check’ on existing theories and established methods of empirical inquiry. We respond to this by analysing trust as a social construction created within unique socially constructed contexts, such as boundaries. Actors assign meaning to boundaries which then influence what and how trust is created. To better understand how this may be achieved we use the notion of sensemaking to bring contextual nuance to the fore. Narrative is the preferred way actors make sense of their experiences. It is also the way research is constructed and developed, and we consider the role of the dominant, normative-based trust discourse in influencing how trust is talked about among and between researchers. A practice-based research agenda is advanced that sees trust reframed as ‘trusting’ or ‘trust-in-making’, in order to represent it as something individuals do.