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The purpose of this paper is to provide readers with a deeper theoretical understanding of liminality, its utility in understanding the experiences of graduate student researchers and how being explicit about the liminal nature of the graduate student experience can be especially impactful for students from marginalized communities.

This conceptual paper examines liminality as an essential component of researcher identity development and how an awareness of this liminality relates to effective and inclusive librarian support of graduate student researchers. The authors explore the affective and academic implications of operating in this liminal state and how direct acknowledgment of this inbetweenness, especially within the spaces of classroom instruction and research consultations, can be leveraged as an inclusive practice. The authors ground this exploration in critical pedagogy.

Graduate student researchers often operate in an unacknowledged liminal state, which causes students to question the importance of their previous knowledge and life experiences and feel discouraged and uncertain about their potential place in academia. This is particularly damaging to students from communities that have been traditionally marginalized and excluded from higher education.

The authors are liaison librarians to education and health sciences at a large, minority-serving, urban research institution in the western USA and draw on their experience supporting students in disciplines that include many students returning to graduate studies after substantial professional experience. This work makes a contribution to library and information studies by focusing on the concept of liminality. The authors offer a conceptual perspective on liminality relative to librarians and their support role in the graduate student experience.

This chapter explores the symbolic connections between coming of age liminality and identity-oriented consumption practices in postmodern American culture, specifically among adolescent girls.

Forty-two female participants (ages 20–23) participants were asked to answer the general question of “Who am I?” through creating identity collages and writing accompanying narrative summaries for each of three discrete life stages: early adolescence (past-self), late adolescence (present-self), and adulthood (future-self). Data were analyzed using a hermeneutical approach.

Coming of age in postmodern American consumer culture involves negotiating paradoxical identity tensions through consumption-oriented benchmarks, termed “market-mediated milestones.” Market-mediated milestones represent achievable criteria by which adolescents solidify their uncertain liminal self-concepts.

In contrast to the traditional Van Gennepian conceptualization of rites of passage, market-mediated milestones do not necessarily mark a major transition from one social status to another, nor do they follow clearly defined stages. Market-mediated milestones help adolescents navigate liminality through an organic, nonlinear, and incremental coming of age process.

Rather than traditional cultural institutions (e.g., church, family), the marketplace is becoming the central cultural institution around which adolescent coming of age identity is constructed. As such, organizations have the power to create market-mediated milestones for young people. In doing so, organizations should be mindful of adolescent well-being.

This research marks a turning point in understanding traditional rites of passage in light of postmodern degradation of cultural institutions. The institutions upon which traditional rites of passage are based have changed; therefore, our conceptions of what rites of passage are today should change as well.

Transitions – as a focus of study – have been missing from information behaviour research. The purpose of this paper is to explore the topic of transitions – their characteristics and influences, the related concept of liminality and Transitions Theory – and what it can contribute to the field of information behaviour. This exploration includes the application of liminality and Transitions Theory to an empirical study of participants making the transition from doctoral student to early career academic.

In addition to an extended literature review, this paper reports on a qualitative study that used constructivist grounded theory methodology for data collection and analysis. Early career academics were followed for a five- to seven-month period and data were collected using interviews and “check-ins”. Transitions Theory and liminality were used to guide the analysis.

Three important findings were highlighted: the complicating effects of being in a liminal space on information behaviour; the changing information needs of those undergoing a transition; and the importance of comparison as a way of using information to understand new situations. A revised model of Transitions Theory (Meleis et al., 2000) is also proposed, to incorporate information behaviour.

This paper demonstrates that by examining information behaviour over longer periods of time and by making transitions a focus of research, new understandings and insight can be gained into what information individual needs, how they find, share and use that information. This research demonstrates that information behaviour research adds important elements to the study of transitions and, conversely, that transitions (and Transitions Theory) add important elements to the study of information behaviour.

This essay addresses the topic of research lifeworlds and personal lifeworlds and what we gain and lose as researchers, and as people, from their overlaps and collisions. The essay analyses six narrative accounts of the authors lived experience of a unique collision between research and personal lifeworlds when the researcher-mother presented with her sick daughter to the hospital emergency department that served as the field site for her own research. This analysis revealed the following themes through which a researcher’s personhood animates the research process: feeling exposed but empowered; gaining conceptual clarity while opening up ethical ambiguity; and becoming liminal because of identity shifts and coping through self-reflexivity. The essay contributes to our collective understanding and shared learning of the ways a researcher’s personhood shapes, and is shaped by, the research process and (re)production of knowledge.

This paper aims to examine the notion of escape, which is central to the consumer experience literature, yet remains largely undertheorized. By surfacing the multi-dimensionality of escape, the authors develop a more fine-grained conceptualization of this notion. In addition, this work helps shed new light on past consumer research findings that mobilize the notion of escape.

The paper is based on a review and interpretation of literature referring to the notion of escape in consumer research.

This paper’s first contribution is to extend the concept of escape based on the Turnerian framework of structure/anti-structure, by establishing a key difference between objects to “escape from” and the major themes of “escape into”. A second contribution is to identify other forms of escape that are mundane, restorative and warlike, and that mobilize the self in different ways.

The paper provides a more precise conceptualization of escape to motivate further research on this particularly important concept for understanding consumer experience.

Escape from one’s own self has become an important feature of contemporary life. Consumer experiences may be ways of crafting identities, but they also form the means of escaping the pressures that come with the burdens of identity.

This paper goes beyond past research on escape by identifying other types of escapes, which have not really been theorized in consumer research. The authors especially note the importance of ephemeral moments where people temporarily suspend their reflexive self, which the authors conceive as a new type of escape route.

This chapter seeks to elucidate specific behavioral patterns that occur when people travel and consume luxury items using concepts drawn from sociocultural and economic theories. These concepts are Walter Benjamin's “aura,” Karl Marx's “commodity fetishism,” and Arnold Van Gennep's “liminality.” These concepts are deployed within the spheres of tourism and luxury in order to analyze how tourists on a shopping spree search for forms of authenticity, how this type of travel is similar in many respects to a religious quest, and, finally, how the design of luxury outlets in European capitals convey religious overtones.

Despite the prevalence of technology in health care, marketing research on social media in the birthspace is limited. The purpose of this paper is to explore how birthing women leverage social media for transformative well-being in the liminal context of birth.

A qualitative study of women who had recently experienced birth was undertaken. Thematic analysis of data from in-depth interviews reveals birthing women’s digital practices and social media capabilities for well-being in a liminal space.

Within the birthspace, women use social media and digital platforms in an effortful and goal-directed way for role transitions and transformation, curating self and other history, goal striving and normalizing experience. These digital practice styles facilitate consumer integration of the liminal digital birthspace and in situ service encounter enabling diverse value outcomes. Drawing on liminality and social presence theories, the authors interpret these practices as demonstrating three interactive liminal stages of suspending, comprehending and transforming. Multi-modality and rapid connection afforded by digital devices and social media platforms provide social presence (according to perceived immediacy and intimacy) enabling transformative well-being outcomes.

This study is unique, as it provides insights into the traditionally private health service experience of birth. Further, the authors extend the understanding of liminal spaces and use of digital technology, specifically for transformative outcomes, by proposing a framework of consumers’ digital practice styles for well-being in liminal spaces.

The purpose of this study is to review the literature on liminal leadership, present a comprehensive perspective of it compared to other types of leadership, propose a conceptual framework of liminal leadership and provide a case on how liminal leadership addresses modern workplace issues in the ever-changing and competitive global environment.

This research is conceptual in nature. For this, the authors searched literature on organizational and leadership theories of liminality within organizational settings and analyzed various leadership perspectives to develop a construct of liminal leadership.

The comparative analysis revealed different and/or similar characteristics of liminal leadership with other types of leadership theories. On the basis of the comparative analysis, a synthesis of liminal leadership and a proposed conceptual framework to pursue future studies of liminal leadership are provided.

First, the notion of liminal leadership is emerging; few have been conducted to investigate the concept. Therefore, the authors’ approach to compose the theoretical background of liminal leadership is limited. Second, they drew a logical framework of leadership components a liminal leader might use from chosen leadership theories which had some kinship and likeness to liminal leadership. However, the comparative analysis of the relationship is limited because of the conceptually based nature of analysis. Third, the proposed model of liminal leadership is tentative and conceptual in nature. Empirical studies are needed to verify the psychometric structure and reliability of the model.

Despite its importance and a sense of urgency, almost no discussion on liminal leadership or liminality can be found in the field of HRD. The limited knowledge associated with liminal leadership places high value on the results of this study. This paper will provide a seminal base that may stimulate future human resource development (HRD) scholars. The purpose for this study is to contribute a conceptualization of liminal leadership as it applies to the field of HRD as leading and facilitating organizational changes.

This paper aims to show how collective embodiment with physical objects (i.e. props) support young children’s learning through the construction of liminal blends that merge physical, virtual and conceptual resources in a mixed-reality (MR) environment..

Building on Science through Technology Enhanced Play (STEP), we apply the Learning in Embodied Activity Framework to further explore how liminal blends can help us understand learning within MR environments. Twenty-two students from a mixed first- and second-grade classroom participated in a seven-part activity sequence in the STEP environment. The authors applied interaction analysis to analyze how student’s actions performed with the physical objects helped them to construct liminal blends that allowed key concepts to be made visible and shared for collective sensemaking.

The authors found that conceptually productive liminal blends occurred when students constructed connections between the resources in the MR environment and coordinated their embodiment with props to represent new understandings.

This study concludes with the implications for how the design of MR environment and teachers’ facilitation in MR environment supports students in constructing liminal blends and their understanding of complex science phenomena.

This paper attempts to contribute to an expanding body of literature that critically engages with both the theory and practice of market segmentation. Through the theoretical lens of liminality and its implicit elements, the notion of boundary creation inherent in age‐based market segmentation of the youth market is explored.

Using empirical data collected as part of a longitudinal study on liminal consumers, marketing's attempt at laying down parameters and constructing borders is presented as a strategic exacerbation of liminal zones already replete with tension and ambiguity.

It is concluded that theoretical consideration of this data highlights the fluidity and porous nature of such constructed boundaries, rendering attempts at creating discernable, knowable segments, potentially futile. Thus by critically viewing this segment, not just as a marketing demographic, but as a liminal zone, an alternative consideration of the theory and practice of age segmentation is presented.

The longitudinal study spanned a period from midway through the participants' final months of primary education and early stages of secondary education. Research that focused on their completion of a year in secondary education would perhaps have yielded further insights.

This research offers tangible insights into the social worlds of a burgeoning market segment, albeit a liminal one, offering actionable realities based on the inextricable intertwining of their consumption practices and lived experiences.

Rather than view children as socio‐cultural non‐descripts who are of interest to marketers purely for their ability to be located along a continuum of cognitive development, this research aims to understand and explore the specific intricasies of the tweens' mediation of their liminal world using consumption practices

Consumption practices emerged that highlighted the attempted resolution and mediation of such tensions while also pointing to the clear mutability and ambiguity of supposed borders between child, tween and teen segmented groups. Age‐segmentation, conceptualised by marketers as a strategic creation of borders so as to enhance product offerings little reflects the realities of how age is perceived, experienced and acted out by those categorised within the margins and parameters of targeted marketing. By viewing this segment, not just as a marketing demographic but as a liminal zone where liminars “elude or slip through the network of classifications that normally locate states and positions in cultural space”, an alternative consideration of the theory and practice of age‐segmentation is presented.