The focus of this article is the exploration of and an explanation of student researchers' affect and activity in an action research project. Using a hermeneutical theoretical framework we argue that the researcher group as a whole constructs a wave process and at the same time each individual researcher in the group creates a wave process that may be similar or different to that of the group. These processes shape each other, through phases of engagement and disengagement in the researcher cycle, and make the research experience richer. The article examines five separate researcher narratives, extracting excerpts, to show how these examples showcase this wave phenomenon. Two themes, activity and affect, are identified in the narrative excerpts provided; sub-categories such as roles on a team and context of research are explored in these themes. The importance of explicit discussion of researcher engagement and disengagement in wave cycles is discussed. (Contains 9 figures and 1 table.)