Qualitative Sociology Review
2007
Volume III Issue 2


Contributors

Robert Prus, a professor of sociology at the University of Waterloo, is a symbolic interactionist, pragmatist ethnographer, and social theorist. Stressing the importance of connecting social theory with the study of human action in direct, experientially-engaged terms, he has written extensively on the ways that people make sense of and deal with the life-worlds in which they find themselves. His publications include Road Hustler with C.R.D. Sharper; Hookers, Rounders, and Desk Clerks with Styllianoss Irini; Making Sales; Pursuing Customers; Symbolic Interaction and Ethnographic Research; Subcultural Mosaics and Intersubjective Realities; Beyond the Power Mystique; and The Deviant Mystique with Scott Grills. Working as an ethnohistorian and theorist, Robert Prus has been tracing the developmental flows of pragmatist thought from the classical Greek era (c700-300BCE) to the present time. This transhistorical venture has taken him into a number of areas of western social thought -- including rhetoric, poetics, religious studies, history, education, politics, and philosophy.

Contact: prus@uwaterloo.ca

Tim Gawley (PhD) is an Assistant Professor of Leadership at Wilfrid Laurier University’s Brantford campus, Canada. He teaches research methods and evaluation research in Laurier Brantford’s multidisciplinary Contemporary Studies, Criminology and Leadership programs. His current interests are symbolic interactionist theory, qualitative methods and the sociology of occupations and professions.

Contact: tgawley@wlu.ca

Frank Nutch (PhD) teaches sociology of science and the sociology of everyday life at Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. He received his MA from the University of Hawaii - Manoa and his PhD from York University, Toronto, Ontario. His main research focus in the sociology of science and scientific knowledge has been in investigating the use, history, and development of the scientific field research technique of photographic identification of cetecea (whales, dolphins, and porpoises). He is currently writing a book based on his two decades of participant observation research with marine field scientists, tentatively titled: Scientists at Work: Reflections on doing fieldwork with marine scientists.

Contact: fnutch@trentu.ca

Allison L. Hurst (PhD) is Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology and Legal Studies at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio. Trained as both a lawyer and sociologist, she is interested in issues of class inequality and class consciousness. Her courses include Class Studies, Class Issues and the Law, From Hard Times to Hard Time: The Law of Prisons and Welfare Reform, and Critical Legal Studies. Her current research examines the impact of student debt on college students’ lives and opportunities for mobility.

Contact: hursta@kenyon.edu

Richard C. Mitchell (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in Child and Youth Studies, Brock University, Canada and completed his doctorate in Sociology and Social Policy with the University of Stirling, Scotland. His standpoint is grounded in critical social pedagogy with a focus on transdisciplinary applications of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. His current teaching looks at human rights within education, mental health, child and youth work, and related professional settings, as well as social policy, citizenship and equity issues for under-eighteens.

Contact: rmitchel@brocku.ca

Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen (PhD) is a Professor at Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at The Copenhagen Business School. There, he is also research manager of the Public and Political Management Group consisting of 20 researchers. He has worked with discourse analysis and systems theory for quite many years. His focus has been diagnoses of present within the empirical field of public administration in a very broad sense. He has published 9 books and more than 30 articles. In 2003 he published Discursive analytical strategies. Understanding Foucault, Koselleck, Laclau, Luhmann at Policy Press.

Contact: aakerstrom@cbs.dk

Ellu Saar (PhD) is a senior researcher at Institute for International and Social Studies, Tallinn University, Estonia. She is now coordinating the EU 6th framework project "Towards a Lifelong Learning Society in Europe: The Contribution of the Education System". She is published articles about social stratification, job mobility, transitions in youth in European Sociological Review; European Societies; Europe-Asia Studies; Nationalities Papers etc.

Contact: saar@iiss.ee

Margarita Kazjulja is a researcher at Institute for International and Social Studies, Tallinn University, Estonia. She is also a doctoral student in Tallinn University. Her areas of research are the stratification, education, labour market and social network.

Contact: kazjulja@iiss.ee

Wendy Leo Moore (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Texas A&M University. She hold a Ph.D. in Sociology, as well as a J.D., and her research integrates the sociology of race and law. Her book Reproducing Racism in Elite Law Schools: White Institutional Space and Social and Political Inequality, is in production with Rowman & Littlefield.

Contact: wlmoore@tamu.edu

Jennifer L. Pierce (PhD) is an associate professor of sociology in the Department of American Studies at the University of Minnesota. She has published Gender Trials: Emotional Lives in Contemporary Law Firms (California Press, 1995), Is Academic Feminism Dead? Theory in Praxis (NYU Press), and Feminist Waves, Feminist Generations: Life Stories from the Academy (Minnesota Press, 2007). She is currently working on a book tentatively titled Racing for Innocence: Whiteness, Corporate Culture, and the Backlash Against Affirmative Action.

Contact: pierc012@umn.edu

Barbara Adkins (PhD) is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the Queensland University of Technology, Australia. She is also senior social scientist at the Australasian Cooperative Research Centre for Interaction Design (ACID). Her current research examines conceptual and methodological approaches to sociocultural aspects of interaction and urban design.

Contact: b.adkins@qut.edu.au

Eryn Grant is in the final stages of completing her doctorate at Queensland University of Technology, Australia.  She specialises in applying ethnomethodogical approaches to games and persistent worlds online and has worked closely with Dr. Barbara Adkins in conceptualising a methodological matrix for games design at the Australasian Co-operative Research Centre (ACID).

Contact: e.grant@qut.edu.au

Harri Sarpavaara (PhD) is a postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Sociology and Social Psychology at the University of Tampere, Finland. His PhD thesis looked at the representations of embodiment in television advertisements. He has published a number of articles concerning the representations of body and gender, stereotypes, and humor in e-mail jokes and advertising. Sarpavaara is currently investigating substance use and addictions in prison context.

Contact: harri.sarpavaara@uta.fi

Steven Kleinknecht is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at McMaster University. His major research interests revolve around qualitative methods, subcultures, deviant behaviour, online interaction, and social problems. Examining people’s everyday lived experiences using a symbolic interactionist approach, his dissertation is an ethnographic examination of social change and boundary maintenance among the Old Order Mennonites of southwestern Ontario. His other recent research includes the study of the hacker subculture, ex-politicians, and online qualitative methods. Steve also has worked as a research analyst at the Department of Justice Canada where he has written on issues pertaining to restorative justice, juvenile delinquency, and cybercrime.

Contact: kleinksw@mcmaster.ca