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This chapter locates our book in social science debates and critiques challenging ontological and epistemological assumptions underpinning researching approaches emanating from the global north. This is an important contextualising move, given that these debates have surfaced crucial understandings about the dangers of unquestioned assumptions underpinning researching approaches in intercultural and cross-cultural contexts. The chapter outlines how practice architectures, the key theoretical lens employed in this book, have attempted to counter these exclusions. It focusses on the theory’s emergence from the relational (political and material) work of the pedagogy, education, and praxis (PEP) network. This historicising move is part of our shared authorial commitment to rendering visible the taken-for-granted assumptions underpinning researching approaches, including those, such as practice architectures theory, that have a shared commitment to critical educational praxis. The final section of the chapter considers the possibilities and limitations of practice architectures theory as a means of challenging taken-for-granted ontological and epistemological assumptions of research and researching practices.

The Lesley University PhD program in Educational Studies offers a new specialization in adult learning and development. This hybrid, interdisciplinary degree is geared toward mid-career professionals in higher education, community services, non-formal adult learning, and a number of other fields. Since 2008, the program has graduated 36 students whose dissertations have a strong focus on practitioner research. This case study covers the planning process of an interdisciplinary faculty team responding to the need for educators to teach and research adult learners. The guiding philosophy of adult learning and the delivery method of this competency-based curriculum are explained. Students present a research interest upon application and begin to develop a dissertation question in their first year. They attend a weeklong campus residency every semester where they work on competencies through workshops and lectures. This is followed by online course completion in dialogue with faculty mentors and peers. Students finish 45 credits before beginning the dissertation. The importance of a cohort learning community, advising as pedagogy, online support, library resources, qualifying examination, pilot study, and dissertation preparation are discussed. Data gathered from a current self-study highlight both the strengths and the challenges posed by this unique program.

This chapter presents the major components in framing a developmental model of wise organizing in the field of higher education that proceeds along an increasingly more just and responsible path. Our argument considers individual student development theories that lead one to greater competence for wise and socially responsible interactions and engagement in society, and aligns these individual processes with the organizational scholarship emphasizing how organizations enhance their capacities for wise and socially responsible conduct. After reviewing these arguments, we frame a set of research topics required for empirically identifying how universities can cultivate wisdom.

The work of caring has assumed utmost importance during the devastation caused by the pandemic. We employ the feminist theory of care ethics within the context of food provisioning during the pandemic, and examine the work of Food for Chennai, a group of micro-volunteers in the city of Chennai, India who provide home-cooked meals, free of charge, to COVID-19 patients and households that are in quarantine. Using textual and visual data from social media posts (Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram), interviews with an organizer of the movement, and print – media articles, we trace the evolution of this movement, and argue that this network of care could not have developed or grown without the use of digital infrastructure and the affective campaigning that it enables. We add to the scholarship of three linked bodies of work – digital activism, food ethics, and the ethics of care – by grounding our analysis in the immediacy of the crisis and suggesting avenues for thinking about ethical issues and digital activism as crisis response in the future. We conclude by offering ways of reimagining food systems that could embrace values of care in the post-pandemic world.

The Fijian LGBTQI+ movement has significantly grown, shaped around a more significant Pacific identity. The participation of queer activists from the Indo-Fijian community, which represents about 35% of Fiji’s population, is limited, and the struggles, needs, and aspirations of this LGBTQI+ community are mainly invisible. This invisibility is framed within Fiji’s political conflicts. However, there is also a form of self-censorship due to cultural and religious barriers, as well as to dynamics that speak about the trauma of the indentured system and postcolonial violence. Contemporaneously, non-political spaces provide avenues for visibility. While some Indo-Fijian religious contexts welcome gender and sexual diversity forms, these are becoming visible aided by popular social media platforms and Bollywood cinema’s influence. This project explores the dynamics of the Indo-Fijian queer community within Fiji and its broader LGBTQI+ movement, aiming to identify barriers specific to their community and strategies for recognition, visibility, and participation in advocacy and activism. The project is approached as activist research and includes interviews and group discussions with Indo-Fijians self-identifying LGBTQI+.

The field of nonmarket strategy has expanded rapidly over the past 20 years to provide theoretical and practical guidance for managers seeking to influence policymaking. Much of this scholarship has built directly on spatial and “pivotal politics” models of lawmaking. While extremely helpful at identifying crucial targets for lobbying, these models treat all policymakers as identical in their abilities to advance legislative agenda items through various policymaking hurdles. We build upon these earlier models, but include policymakers who vary in their relative effectiveness at advancing measures through the legislative process. We identify how the implications of our model deviate from those of conventional (pivotal politics) analyses. We then present an empirical strategy for identifying effective Lawmakers in the United States Congress, and illustrate the utility of this approach for managers developing nonmarket strategies in legislative institutions, relying on the case of banking and financial services reforms between 2008 and 2011.