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Purpose – This chapter represents a dynamic cycle in a collaborative inquiry conceived some six years ago. The aim of this study is to share some of our reflections, tensions, questions and uncertainties in positioning our own emotional responses as legitimate research data.

Methodology/Approach – We adopted a collaborative second-person methodology within an action research framework in the process of inquiring into our own practice as systemic psychotherapists and women.

Findings – We offer reflections on the positioning of emotion as researchers, tutors and psychotherapists. We discuss three themes from the emotional landscape of the inquiry, research process, research product and gendered voices, in anticipation that they will connect with and be useful to other researchers.

Originality/Value – The chapter introduces our sense-making framework for reflexively exploring the salience of emotion in research. It argues that attenuating, listening and responding to the emotions we feel as researchers both serves as a guide to inquiring into critical social constructs and engenders opportunities to promote social change.

Purposes – The overall aim of the chapter is to explore children's acting and disputing within a family role-play and highlight how different roles are argued upon and negotiated by the participants, both verbally and nonverbally.

Methodology – The chapter is drawn from a single play episode between five 6-year-old girls at a Swedish preschool. The analytical framework of the study is influenced by ethnomethodological work on social action focusing in particular on participants’ methodical ways of accomplishing and making sense of social activities.

Findings – The analyses show that the girls use a range of verbal and nonverbal resources to argue and accomplish the social order of the play (i) using past tense to display the factual past event status, and present tense to bid for upcoming events, (ii) building a mutual pretend understanding of places and objects that were used to configure nearness as well as distance in the girls’ interaction and relationship. Finally, the analyses clearly show that the significance of a pretend role is situated and depends on the social context in which it is negotiated.

Practical implications – To get acquainted with detailed analyses of children's pretend play can be useful for preschool teachers’ understanding of how children build relationships within the play, and hopefully awaken their interest to study children's play in depth in everyday practice.

Value of chapter – The present chapter contributes to a wider understanding of how social relationships are argued and negotiated by preschool girls within pretend family role-play.

This chapter explores the prevalent role of networks, both in person and online, in the gendered academy. The voices and reflections of women scholars are drawn upon to highlight the increasingly important role of social media in the [gendered] academy; implications of networks and social media as a contemporary networking tool are deliberated. Social media may not only boost an individual academics' visibility but also serve as a valuable and efficient networking tool, a navigational compass for academic networks. Brief tips and guidance as to making your online network work for you are also provided in the chapter.

Governance network managers are charged with triggering and sustaining collaborative dynamics, but often struggle to do so because they come from and interact with hierarchical and competitive organizations and systems. Thus, an important step toward effectively managing governance networks is to clarify collaborative dynamics. While the recently proposed collaborative governance regime (CGR) model provides a good start, it lacks both the conceptual clarity and parsimony needed in a useful analytical tool. This theoretical chapter uses the logic model framework to assess and reorganize the CGR model and then amends it using Follett’s theory of integrative process to provide a parsimonious understanding of collaborative dynamics, as opposed to authoritative coordination or negotiated cooperation. Uniquely, Follett draws from political and organizational theory practically grounded in the study of civic and business groups to frame the manner in which integrative process permeates collaboration. We argue that the disposition, style of relating, and mode of association in her integrative method foster collaborative dynamics while avoiding the counterproductive characteristics of hierarchy and competition. We develop an alternative logic model for studying collaborative dynamics that clarifies and defines these dynamics for future operationalization and empirical study.

“Voices from Two Sides of the Atlantic” is a report of a case study that I conducted in 2006 on women's leadership in the United States and Finland. Two participants in each country represent highly accomplished leaders in higher education and one participant in each country is an elected public official. My goal was to determine how the women leaders perceive the social context in which they grew up influenced their leadership; whether a connection exists between socialization, social values, and leadership; how women view themselves as leaders and what values are important for them in their leadership roles. The results demonstrate that national enculturation does not impact leadership execution, but it provides a framework for life, which impacts how the women define their role in society.