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Purpose – This chapter explores various approaches to historical methods as they relate to sport and physical culture research.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter discusses various paradigmatic approaches to historical methods (reconstructionist, constructionist and deconstructionist) and takes up current debates related to archives, newspapers, photographs and oral history as they relate to the method. Drawing on these discussions, I outline various approaches to designing a sport and physical culture project using historical methods, focusing on my work on women's industrial sport in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Findings – I discuss how data evolved from the method and how I made choices about the inclusion and exclusion of materials. The chapter concludes that historical methods are tedious, complex and messy but also exciting and insightful ways to do research. I also conclude by encouraging the researcher to be reflexive and aware of one's ‘positionality’ as a researcher and embrace the historical process.

Originality/value – The chapter is original work. It is not so much a prescriptive ‘how-to’ guide for historical research, but it works to take up current debates in historical methods. It also endeavours to engage students and scholars alike as they consider their research projects and the potential value of historical methods.

Purpose – This chapter explores the significance of emotional exchanges between historians and their research participants in the production of critical histories of the late twentieth-century British women’s movement. It argues for the importance of exploring the ways in which positive emotions, including feelings of excitement, reverence and commonality, influence the research process and potentially complicate historians’ capacity to produce histories that critically assess popular narratives of the development of the women’s movement.

Methodology/Approach – This chapter draws on qualitative assessments of my own experiences carrying out oral history interviews with women’s movement members to explore the emotional exchanges that take place during the research process. It utilises several historiographical concepts, including being a ‘fan of feminism’, discussions about historical subjectivity and oral history debates about empathy, to reflect on my emotional responses whilst carrying out research.

Findings – This chapter demonstrates that positive emotional exchanges between historians and their research participants influence the production of critical histories of the women’s movement. It highlights how historians’ personal identifications with their areas of study impact on their emotional engagement with research participants, potentially complicating or contravening their wider historical aims.

Originality/Value – Several historians have explored how negative emotional exchanges with research participants influenced their production of critical histories of the women’s movement. By focusing on the influence of positive emotional exchanges, this chapter provides an original contribution to this area of reflexive discussion, as well as wider assessments of historical subjectivity and researcher empathy.

This study investigates Rokkan's research programme in the light of the differences between case- and variables-based methodologies. Three phases of the research process are distinguished. Studying the way Rokkan actually proceeded in the research within his Europe project, we find that he follows the protocols of case-methodologies such as grounded theory. In the second phase of the research process, however, he constructs variables-based models as tools for his macro-historical comparisons. To get to variables from the sensitizing concepts coded in the first phase, Rokkan defines his variables as close to cases as possible: variables as nominal level typologies, types as variable values. He thus faces two interrelated dilemmas. First, a philosophy of science dissonance: he legitimates his research only with reference to a variable-methodology, while his research is thoroughly case based. Second, a paradox of double coding: using variable-based models in the second phase, the status of the knowledge available in the first phase memos is degraded. Rokkan cannot decide between the two main solutions to these dilemmas: The first solution is to discard his heterogeneous data, instead working only with homogeneous data that opens up to more consistently variables-oriented research. The second solution is to replace the notion of variables/variable values with typology/types, thereby returning to cases, pursuing comparative case reconstructions in the third phase of research. The study concludes in favour of the second solution.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the challenges and rewards of engaging in the inextricably intertwined activities of studying and teaching marketing history. The secondary purpose is to encourage marketing scholars to expand work in this area.

The approach invokes the memoir and that format traces the author personal development in the field of marketing history over 30 years. It discusses what the author learned, how he learned, and how these lessons can be applied.

The paper offers several findings: marketing history can be part of every marketing course; students should be engaged in the development and application of historical findings; marketing scholars must develop an understanding of historical methods as a means of supporting research and teaching; and marketing history should eventually be seen in marketing as economic history is seen in economics.

The paper puts forth an approach for undertaking historical research in marketing and suggests how to use those findings in teaching marketing history. The emphasis focuses on engaging students with the caveat that history is not predictive. The goal is to put marketing events in their proper context, to understand how they develop and how they play out. Marketing history has its own intrinsic value but also provides a new dimension for decision making.

The paper uses a first person narrative of working in developing a field, a historic device not frequently found in marketing. It also represents a historiography of marketing history.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how practical research can be undertaken into sensitive issues within the criminal justice system having cognisance of the needs of those subject to the research process.

A mixed methods design which was complicated due to the subject matter being explored, that of historical reporting of sexual offences. Confidential questionnaires and focus group method utilised, but in constant contact with specialised victim support service to ensure rights of victims understood and interwoven into the design.

Even though there are some very sensitive areas within the criminal justice system where it is believed research is difficult to undertake, it can be achieved by constant reference to the needs of the victim and strict confidentiality. Given the right circumstances and approach, research into what has been previously considered areas of difficulty can be researched effectively.

Due to the research methods explored an utilised, a template for research methodology can be seen which can be transferred into any other sensitive topic that requires research. In addition, by undertaking this method, previously unheard voices of victims of historical crimes can be utilised to inform official policy and practice. However, a limitation of the approach can be the low number of respondents wishing to take part.

Victims have an opportunity to influence public policy. The methods utilised “opens up” the possibility for replication of research into other sensitive areas of the CJS. The methods utilised involved a number of Criminal Justice Agencies which assisted in maximising their understanding of victims experiences thorough the partnership approach. The research methods and results influencing training methods of the police as first responders to such incidents.

The social implications of this paper are that it will encourage other researchers not to be afraid of what appears to be “hard to reach” and sensitive topics in terms of social science research. This will allow for greater numbers of marginalised individuals and victims to engage and influence the criminal justice system, thereby influencing public policy and improving the way victims of crime are treated.

This paper is one of the few, if any, that explores ethical problems and sensitive topics such as historical reporting of sexual offences. It will have resonance for those who wish to undertake similar types of research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the changing research practices of historians, and to contrast their experiences of serendipity in physical and digital information environments.

In total, 20 historians in Southwestern Ontario participated in semi-structured, in-depth interviews. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed employing grounded theory. The analytical approach included memoing, the constant comparative method, and three phases of coding.

Four main themes were identified: agency, the importance of the physical library experience, digital information environments, and novel heuristic forms of serendipity. The authors found that scholars frequently used active verbs to describe their experience with serendipity. This suggests that agency is more involved in the experience than previous conceptualizations of serendipity have suggested, and led us to coin the term “incidental serendipity.” Other key findings include the need for digital tools to incorporate the context surrounding primary sources, and also to provide an organizational context much like what is encountered by patrons in library stacks.

The increased emphasis on digital materials should not come at the expense of the physical information environment, where historians often encounter serendipitous finds. A fine balance and a greater integration between digital and physical resources is needed in order to support scholars’ continued ability to make connections between materials. By showing the active role that historians take in their serendipitous encounters, this paper suggests that historical training is critical for eliciting incidental serendipitous encounters. The authors propose a novel approach, one that examines verbs in serendipity accounts.

The article sets out primarily to fill in some of the gaps in the biography of Lucy Arabella Stocks Garvin (1851–1938), first principal of Sydney Girls High School. As a reflexive exercise stimulated by this biographical research, the second aim is to explore the transformative work of digital sources on the researcher's research processes that in turn generate possibilities for expanded biographical studies in the history of education.

This article encompasses two approaches: the first uses traditional historical methods in the digital sources to provide an expanded biography of Lucy Garvin. The second is a reflexive investigation of the effects of digitisation of sources on the historian's research processes.

The advent of digital technologies has opened up more evidence on the life of Lucy Garvin which enables a fuller account both within and beyond the school gate. Digital sources have helped to address important gaps in her life story that challenge current historiographical understandings about her: for example, regarding her initial travel to Australia; her previous career as a teacher in Australia and the circumstances of her appointment as principal; her private and family life; and her involvement in extra school activities. In the process of exploring Garvin's life, the researcher reflected on the work of digital sources and argues that such sources transform the research process by speeding up and de-situating the collection and selection of evidence, while at the same time expanding and slowing the scrutiny of evidence. The ever-expanding array of digital sources, despite its patchiness, can lead to finer grained expanded biographical studies while increasing the provisionality of historical accounts.

The article presents new biographical information about an important early female educational leader in Australia and discusses the impact of digital sources on archival and research processes in the history of women's education.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate an alternative methodological approach to researching international entrepreneurship which mirrors the creativity of successful entrepreneurial organisations.

The biographical approach discussed overcomes the pervasive linear thinking found in the wider management discipline. Successful entrepreneurial practice is anything but linear. This notion is embraced in the consideration of a methodology which mirrors its non‐linear path.

A biographical approach constructs richer and deeper data which would otherwise remain undiscovered. It allows for a more flexible approach to research. Triangulation with the more usual methods of survey work and in‐depth interview ensures that quality and rigour are maintained throughout.

Research which adopts a more considered, critical perspective is limited in international entrepreneurship. There is evidence that critical entrepreneurship researchers are embracing alternative methodologies such as narrative, discursive and literary approaches which complement and challenge existing dominant thinking.

Up to now, many practitioners have felt that researchers do not listen sufficiently to their stories of success and failure and that there is a lack of meaningful engagement with them. The approach discussed here helps to improve the relationship between researcher and researched.

Following more creative approaches such as those espoused in this paper, can help to facilitate more meaningful interaction between the researcher and the biographical subject.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal, how newspaper archives can support contextualisation in management history research by providing quantitative and/or qualitative, accurate, contemporary and cost-effective, data which is not always available elsewhere.

The paper comprises a literature review, which summarises research into contextual analysis and newspaper archive theory; combined with content and textual analysis of articles published in the Journal of Management History and Management and Organizational History (2013-2017).

The findings reveal that the concept of contextualisation is absent from recent management history articles and that few management historians use newspaper archival sources as a data collection strategy.

There is compelling evidence to suggest that contextual analysis can – perhaps should – be incorporated into management historians’ research strategies because managerial organisations operate in open systems, which are influenced by external factors.

This paper juxtaposes two neglected aspects of management history research, contextuality and newspaper archives, and proposes that a key source for historic contextual analysis is newspaper data.

The purpose of this project is to test and, if necessary, refine a model of the public sphere known as the circulation of power model. The model faces several criticisms and was applied in a case study only once. It has not yet been applied to an American context.

This study uses the circulation of power model as a framework in a historical case study of a regional public library system in the United States. The temporal boundaries of the case are from 1924 to 2016.

This study resulted in a new and modified model called the tessellation model. New concepts in the tessellation model include circuits, tessellations, formal decisions and decision cycles. New distinctions in the model include narrowcast/broadcast and coalesced public/diffuse public.

The tessellation model and its associated concepts offer a new way to describe and analyze deliberative systems over time. The model requires further testing in other contexts.

The tessellation model is a new and validated way to describe the public sphere in an American political context.