In this paper, I engage with arguments put forth by Anna Günther-Hanssen in her article "A swing and a child: How scientific phenomena can come to matter for preschool children's emergent science identities." Günther-Hanssen argues that new materialism can help us see how scientific phenomena can create affordances in becoming scientific and can also help us to better understand what "becoming scientific" means. Drawing on my own research with doctoral students in physics, I explore how the theoretical concepts presented in Günther-Hanssen's paper, can be useful to investigate identity work at the doctoral level. I draw on empirical data from research conducted in Canada, to investigate the material-discursive entanglements that emerge in doctoral work, and the role that recognition plays in relation to these. [For Anna Günther-Hanssen's "A Swing and a Child: How Scientific Phenomena Can Come to Matter for Preschool Children's Emergent Science Identities," see EJ1277950.]