Ellen Nathues is Assistant Professor of Organization, Collaboration and Communication at the University of Twente. Her research focuses on processes of organisation and communication, especially in pluralistic, open and temporary contexts such as inter-organizational collaboration or learning communities. In particular, she is interested in polyphony, agency, materiality, and multimodality issues. Matthias Wenzel is a professor of organisational studies at Leuphana University of Lüneburg. He studies the processes and practices of organising and strategising and their social implications. His current research interests include atmospheres, multimodality, and temporality.

Boundary objects support the collaborative meaning-making of actors with different and sometimes even divergent views and understandings. As such, they are of great importance for inter-organizational collaboration. Today, teams can use a variety of objects in different ways, but how does this affect their work? Ellen Nathues, Mark van Vuuren, Maaike Endedijk (all U of Twente) and Matthias Wenzel (Leuphana U of Lüneburg) use a detailed video-based analysis of inter-organizational teamwork to show how a roadmap emerges in different forms in visual, verbal and embodied ways, with varying implications for collaborative meaning-making. In their presentation, Ellen and Matthias Wenzel provide insights into how boundary objects jump between modes and expand within methods and how these dynamics enable and constrain collaborative work.