Qualitative Sociology Review
2008
Volume IV Issue 1


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

Deborah Ben-Shir is a lecturer at the department of Education and Psychology of The Open University of Israel. Her research interests focus mostly on self-identity, creativity and education.

Contact: dvorabe@openu.ac.il

Katarina Jacobsson is an Assistant Professor of sociology at the University of Lund (Department of Social Work). Interested in social control, rhetoric, narrative practices, and the sociology of deviance, she has studied ‘the world of the deaf’, and the Swedish legal system and its handling of cases of domestic violence and corruption. The concept of “objectivity work” is further examined in her present qualitative research project on medical decision-making.

Contact: katarina.jacobsson@soch.lu.se

Jack Fong (PhD) is currently a new Assistant Professor of Sociology, in the Department of Psychology and Sociology, at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Dr. Fong's interests as a political sociologist revolves around issues of ethnicity and race identities, ethnopolitics, and its material consequences. Dr. Fong's interest in ethnicity is derived from America's continuing efforts at redefining itself as different groups reshape the multicultural landscape of the country's rich identities, especially in the context of September 11, 2001. He has already published in Ethnic and Racial Studies. Moreover, his international orientation has also resulted in a historical ethnography based from his field research with the Karen people residing in their state Kawthoolei, and fighting the infamous military regime of Burma. This work will be released as a book via Universal Publishers, Boca Raton, Florida, USA, in mid-June 2008. It is titled Revolution as Development: The Karen Self-Determination Struggle against Ethnocracy from 1949-2004, and is currently entering the final stages of editing.

Contact: jackfong@csupomona.edu

Giampietro Gobo (PhD) is Associate Professor of Methodology of Social Research at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Milan. He teaches also Ethnography, and Evaluation Methods. He co-edited (with C. Seale, J.F. Gubrium and D. Silverman) Qualitative Research Practice, Sage (2004). His last textbook is Doing Ethnography, Sage (2008). His current research interests are dealing with ‘workplace studies’ and CSCW (computer-supported cooperative work). Currently he is conducting ethnographic and discourse analysis studies in call centre, mainly in Italian Medic Emergency Dispatch Centres.

Contact: giampietro.gobo@unimi.it

Lori McNeil is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Long Island University, C.W. Post Campus. The majority of McNeil’s research focuses on issues typically related to women, children and other marginalized groups. Her recent work has been featured in the Journal of Applied Sociology, Michigan Sociological Review and The Journal of Children & Poverty.

Contact: lori.mcneil@liu.edu

Caroline Pearce is a Sociology Masters student at the University of Manchester. She is currently undertaking research into the experience of grief following the death of a mother in adolescence in young women’s narratives. Her central research interests are narratives, grief, meaning and memory.

Contact: caroline.pearce@yahoo.co.uk

Sang-hui Nam(PhD) is a sociologist and research fellow at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Hamburg. Her research interests include cultural studies and qualitative methods. She is currently working on the project “Innovation and Contention: Protest Waves in South Korea (1988-2005)”. The project focuses on innovative processes in the civil society (i.e. citizen journalism, transnational collective action). She is planning the next research project about the formation of a regional identity in East Asia.

Contact: nam@giga-hamburg.de

Krzysztof T. Konecki is a Professor of Sociology, chair of Organizational and Management Sociology Department, Lodz University, Poland, Vice - President of Qualitative Research Network of European Sociological Association. His major research areas are: qualitative sociology, grounded theory, symbolic interactionism, visual sociology, sociology of management and organization, sociology of work, organizational symbolism, Japanese culture and management, human-non-human-animals relationships.

Contact: konecki@uni.lodz.pl

Peter Nugus (PhD) is a medical sociologist in the Centre for Clinical Governance Research, Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales, Australia.  He researches on the sociology of health organizations, professional identity and integrated care.  Peter is a Research Fellow on the Interprofessional Learning Project and is based in the ACT Department of Health, the Centre's industry partner, in Canberra.

Contact: p.nugus@unsw.edu.au

Lucija Mulej (PhD) is a fellow researcher at the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (www.zrc-sazu.si). She is working at the Section for the Interdisciplinary Research in Humanities. She is a head of international office specially committed to European projects and politics. Her research interests are sociology and sociology of science, especially the theories of knowledge and creativity. She teaches at the University of Nova Gorica (Science and the media, Social Ecology). Recently she has published a manual “A Way to Brussels or How to Win a European Project in Humanities” together with prof.dr. Oto Luthar and mag. Martin Pogacar.

Contact: lucija.mulej@zrc-sazu.si