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Narrative inquiry and life history are privileged methods for studying people's lives, experiences, and identity construction. In this article, I argue that critical life history inquiry is especially suitable for studies of those, who have actively involved in progressive social and cultural movements and have developed an identity as activist educators.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a methodological experiment designed to test the potential of an auto/biographical (Stanley, 1992) life history. Could it serve a purpose for which it was not originally intended? Specifically, I consider the extent to which a life history articulates with the literature on migration, even though it was not written for this purpose.

I consider this issue via a series of four narrative vignettes representing the story of this experiment.

I found that the life history does more than articulate with the migration literature on conceptual distinction. It also animates, supplements and interrogates theories therein about the utility and futility of making distinctions. In this respect the experiment has been a success.

This paper has not explicitly engaged with the ethics and politics of employing life history in ways for which it was not intended.

This paper is making a methodological contribution to the area of qualitative research and suggests that multiple analyses might perhaps make life history more attractive to funders.

This chapter draws on my experience of conducting a life history study of teachers of black and Asian origin. Its title is drawn from remarks made to me by a senior colleague on hearing that I had received ESRC funding for the study. They are interesting not only in respect of their apparent dismissal of one colleague's work by another, but also as they encompass assumptions about the fit between researcher and research topic. In this particular case the concern related to a life history study, though the sentiment might also be applied to any form of research, and perhaps especially ethnography that seeks to achieve a detailed interior perspective on an aspect of social life.

The very contextual nature of most mitigating evidence runs counter to America’s individualistic culture. Prior research has found that capital jurors are unreceptive to most mitigating circumstances, but no research has examined the capital sentencing decisions of trial judges. This study fills that gap through a content analysis of eight judicial sentencing opinions from Delaware. The findings indicate that judges typically dismiss contextualizing evidence in their sentencing opinions and instead focus predominately on the defendant’s culpability. This finding calls into question the ability of guided discretion statutes to ensure the consideration of mitigation and limit arbitrariness in the death penalty.

This chapter narratively chronologizes the life of a man, now in his late 1960s, who has been key in promoting sport as a vehicle for community development in one of the most economically and politically challenged of all Southeast Asian countries – Cambodia.

Popular in a number of disciplines but rarely applied so far in the field of sport, social development and peace, the main strength of life history analysis is its ability to let stories speak for themselves. The focus on “narrativization” not only provides a rich account of a given topic, but also allows storytellers to shape their accounts, identify their audience, and detail the settings in which these accounts take place.

Cambodian sport (especially football in the northwest province of Siem Reap) and Cambodian society more broadly owes much to the committed efforts of Mr. Ouk Sareth. Not only does the chapter help to better understand the various phases and trajectories of Sareth’s colorful life and the fascinating experiences he has encountered, but also the unique challenges his country has faced and overcome during the seven decades of his life.

We hope that others involved in studying the link between sport, social development and peace will consider narrative method and life history approaches to showcase the pivotal individuals who have operated in the “engine room” of this link.

This paper aims to demonstrate advantages of using the photo elicitation technique from sociology, ethnography and visual anthropology to management history through reference to a study of job loss within the State Electricity Commission of Victoria in the Latrobe Valley, Australia, as it was undergoing transition and privatization in the early 1990s.

This is a methodology paper exploring photo elicitation and the theoretical perspectives of life course and identity work when applied in management history.

The use of photo elicitation encouraged interview participants to share their perspectives about the common experience of job loss in an Australian regional area which gave rise to some common themes about occupational identity and the challenges of being unemployed.

After job loss, some common experiences have been found, namely, depression; drug and alcohol addiction; domestic violence and family break down; and even suicide.

Use of photo elicitation provided the methodology and framework to undertake original research in management history in an Australian region still experiencing denidustrialization of brown coal mining and power generation.

Organizational life and policy making is increasingly conceived in terms of a “three sector” model – public, private and “third”. The purpose of this research paper is to examine a little‐studied phenomenon that increasingly characterises societies in both the “developed” and the “developing” worlds. It aims to argue that these “sectors” have permeable boundaries, and that increasing numbers of activists and professionals operate across such boundaries, with important implications for policy and work.

The research paper reports on a set of new ethnographic life‐work history data from the UK, Bangladesh and Philippines to explore experiences of people who cross between, or straddle, the third sector and the public sector.

The paper constructs a preliminary typology of boundary crosser archetypes for purposes of further analysis. This is based on motivations and levels of boundary crossing. Boundary crossing of this kind is linked with the concept of “work role transition”, and with the micro‐politics of policy contention.

The paper concludes by suggesting that such work may offer new practical insights into strengthening the capacity of both third sector and government agencies.

The paper aims to be original in opening up this new topic for further discussion (and in particular problematizing the idea of sector boundaries), and through using the life history method to as part of organisational ethnography.

The purpose of this paper is to make a specific attempt of historicizing outstanding academic leadership in the field of management history.

By using the biographical method and applying it to the material contained in Hodgetts's video interview of Wren and Bedeian's autobiography, the authors examine how outstanding management laureates, Wren and Bedeian, look back on their own lives and the people who influenced them.

The intellectual and institutional origins of their life stories are traced and the factors in Wren's and Bedeian's lives that might explain their pathways to becoming the US outstanding management historians as the Academy of Management Fellows are assessed.

The paper highlights the most outstanding achievements of the past in a manner that might be valuable when addressing the present day concerns about outstanding teaching and research in the field of management history.

The unique contribution of this study is its focus on showing how the manner in which outstanding management historians narrate the past may explain their present‐day achievements, and thus help readers understand that very past.