Co-produced research holds enormous value within the health sciences. Yet, there can be a heavy focus on what research participants think, do and know; while the researcher's responsibility to explore and re/work their own knowledge or praxis tends to escape from view. This is reflected in the limited use of co-production to explore broad structural distributions of health and risk(s). The authors argue this missed opportunity has the potential to unfold as what Berlant calls a ‘cruel optimism’, where something desirable becomes an obstacle to flourishing and/or produces harm. This paper explores challenges to involving lay populations meaningfully in health research amidst a neoliberal cultural landscape that tends to 'responsibilise' people with problems they cannot solve.

The purpose of the paper is fourfold:

1. Reflect on the flipped positioning of a council of experts methodology, which brings into view what researchers think, do and know (reflexivity) when co‐producing research in health settings

2. Explore how contemporary feminist and hermeneutic philosophical thought might add to, or refine, methodologies for co‐ producing health research

3. Outline the Women's Thought Collective methodology which will be of use and interest to researchers in diverse health settings

4. Discuss how to pursue co‐production research that does elevate the role of lay populations in research but does not reconstitute a cruel optimism by eliding roles and responsibilities for researchers during the co‐production of knowledge.

Drawing together principles from hermeneutic and feminist philosophy, the authors develop a novel methodology for co‐producing research about determinants of health and health risk (using a case study of alcohol consumption as an example) that centres on what researchers do, know and think during research.