This article examines the ethical complexities of informed consent (IC) in participatory research, arguing that standardized, legalistic approaches fail to address the dynamic, relational nature of collaborative knowledge production. Drawing on experiences from the international participatory project CoAct conducted in Europe and Argentina, we explore how rigid IC frameworks, shaped by biomedical ethics, GDPR, and IRB resp. REC requirements often clash with the evolving needs of co-researchers and communities. We distinguish between formalized IC as a legal safeguard and IC as an ethical, processual practice embedded in ongoing researcher-participant relationships. Through empirical examples and reflexive practices, we highlight how participant diversity, power imbalances, and context-specific risks challenge conventional IC models. In response, we show how our equity-promoting, flexible, and inclusive consent practices were tailored to participants’ varying capacities, literacies, and vulnerabilities, and how we reframed IC as living ethical commitment grounded in care, mutual responsibility, and collective decision-making. We outline the limitations we faced and conclude with four key measures - dynamic consent processes, accessibility, reflexivity, and community orientation - as practical steps for improving IC in participatory research. This contribution advances the conversation on ethical research by demonstrating how IC serves as a key site of negotiation between institutional constraints and the principles of justice, trust, and co-creation.
Malik et al. (Mon,) studied this question.