如何开展研究
Before you really get into this book, you might like to know a bit more
about the authors.
Rebecca Boden, from England, is professor of accounting at the
University of the West of England. She did her PhD in politics
immediately after graduating from her first degree (which was in history
and politics). She worked as a contract researcher in a university before
the shortage of academic jobs in 1980s Britain forced her into the civil
service as a tax inspector. She subsequently launched herself on to the
unsuspecting world of business schools as an accounting academic.
Debbie Epstein, a South African, is a professor in the School of Social
Sciences at Cardiff University. She did her first degree in history and
then worked briefly as a research assistant on the philosopher Jeremy
Bentham’s papers. Unable to read his handwriting, she went on to teach
children in a variety of schools for seventeen years. She returned to
university to start her PhD in her forties and has been an academic ever
since.
Jane Kenway, an Australian, is professor of education at Monash
University with particular responsibility for developing the field of
global cultural studies in education. She was a schoolteacher and
outrageous hedonist before she became an academic. But since
becoming an academic she has also become a workaholic, which has
done wonders for her social life, because, fortunately, all her friends are
similarly inclined. Nonetheless she is interested in helping nextgeneration
academics to be differently pleasured with regard to their
work and their lives.
As you can see, we have all had chequered careers which are far from
the stereotype of the lifelong academic but that are actually fairly
typical. What we have all had to do is to retread ourselves, acquire new
skills and learn to cope in very different environments. In our current
jobs we all spend a lot of time helping and supporting people who are
learning to be or developing themselves as academics. Being an accountant,
Rebecca felt that there had to be a much more efficient way of helping
