From Interview Transcript to Interpretive Story: Part 1 ...kmacd/IDSC10/Readings/interviews/analysis.pdf · From Interview Transcript to Interpretive Story: Part 1 ... interview transcripts

FIELD METHODSMcCormack / FROM TRANSCRIPT TO STORY: PART 1

From Interview Transcript toInterpretive Story: Part 1—

Viewing the Transcriptthrough Multiple Lenses

CORALIE MCCORMACKUniversity of Canberra

For researchers working within a narrative inquiry framework, the task of con-structing an interpretive story is daunting. They need to know, What do we do afterwe have transcribed our interview tapes? The author’s response to this question isdescribed in this article. The lenses of narrative processes, language, context, andmoments are the dimensions people use to construct and reconstruct their identityand to give meaning to their lives. These lenses highlight both the individuality andthe complexity of a life. Excerpts from an interview with one postgraduate studentillustrate some of the views highlighted by each of these lenses.

SETTING THE SCENE

Researchers who work within a narrative inquiry framework face a daunt-ing task. Faced with page upon page of interview transcripts, how do we con-struct what Ellis (1995) calls a meaningful story? Researchers report feeling“terrified and overwhelmed” and “at a loss as to where and how to begin”(Kiesinger 1998:84). In short, they want to know what to do after they havetranscribed their interview tapes.

The two articles in this series respond to this problem by describing theprocess that took me from interview transcript to meaningful story. The pro-cess involved looking at interview transcripts through multiple lenses: activelistening, narrative processes, language, context, and moments, then usingthe views highlighted by these lenses to write interpretive stories. Theselenses are the dimensions people use to construct and reconstruct their iden-tity and to give meaning to their lives. Thus, they highlight both the individu-ality and the complexity of a life.

Field Methods, Vol. 12, No. 4, November 2000 282–297© 2000 Sage Publications, Inc.

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Excerpts from an interview with one postgraduate student (Anna) illus-trate some of the views highlighted by each of the lenses. Anna was one offourteen women interviewed as part of my doctoral research. This researchexplored the following question: How does the experience of being a post-graduate research student change the way women construct and experienceleisure in their everyday lives? I have illustrated the views from Anna’s inter-view transcript because it was this transcript that significantly influenced thedevelopment of my process of moving from interview transcript to meaning-ful story.

The process of developing a meaningful story using the views highlightedby the multiple lenses is described in the second article. The processdescribed in the two articles is not presented as a recipe whose steps are to befollowed meticulously and in sequence; rather, it is one approach otherresearchers may wish to consider as they approach their interviewtranscripts.

BEGINNING THE STORY

The process for analyzing interview transcripts that I describe here grewfrom my experience of studying the feelings women associate with leisure. Ihad become uncomfortable with the process I had been using as a researcher:moving from interview transcript to report and with my assumption that theprocess and the presentation was “giving voice” to those with whom I spoke.In particular, I was concerned that the traditional method of coding forthemes in transcripts and studying those themes separated people’s wordsfrom their spoken and heard context. The outcome seemed to be the loss ofthe individual’s experience and the context of that experience. I found thatothers, too, were concerned about such questions—so concerned, in fact, thatthey had named their concerns the “crisis of representation” (Lincoln andDenzin 1994:576).

MISSING ACCOUNTS

Some social scientists responded to the “crisis” by providing “powerful,propositional, tacit, intuitive, emotional, historical, poetic, and empatheticexperience of the Other” (Lincoln and Denzin 1994:582) through the texts

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they wrote. These responses included representing interview texts as per-sonal narratives (Kiesinger 1998; Tierney 1998), poems (Richardson 1992;Glense 1997), short stories (Diversi 1998), dramatic monologues (Hatton1998), or reader’s theatre (Donmoyer and Yennie-Donmoyer 1995; Adamset al. 1998). However, I was left wondering how the authors came to repre-sent their transcripts in these ways. Few had exposed to the scrutiny of read-ers what Mauthner and Doucet (1998) describe as “the nitty-gritty of how weanalysed the interview transcripts” (p. 119). As Riessman (1993) observed,students were “drowning in a sea of interview transcripts” because the “qual-itative research literature was largely silent about ways to approach longstretches of talk that took the form of narrative accounts” (p. v).

To the accounts of researchers who have shared their process of movingfrom interview transcript to meaningful story (Cortazzi 1993; Riessman1993; Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, and Zilber 1998; Mathieson and Barrie1998; Mauthner and Doucet 1998), I would like to add the process I used inmy doctoral research. However, before I can tell the nitty-gritty of my pro-cess, I will summarize the research framework within which this process isembedded. “How we analyse and interpret interview transcripts, indeed anytexts, reveals the personal and social stances we take up in relation to learningand to life, our underlying assumptions, presuppositions and the wider socialdiscourses to which we belong” (Grant 1996:111). Stories are always told,retold, and interpreted from somewhere.

VIEWING THE WORLD

My research framework combines particular understandings of the natureof research, the nature of knowledge, the purpose of research, the nature ofthe research design, and the nature of the research process. These understand-ings are named and summarized in Table 1. This framework values transfor-mation at a personal level, the everyday context of people’s lives, individualsubjectivity, and the researcher’s voice. It strives to be both ethical andaccountable.

FROM INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTTO INTERPRETIVE STORY

Moving from interview transcript to interpretive story occurs in twostages:

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1. Viewing the interview transcript through multiple lenses, which involves thefollowing:• immersing oneself in the transcript through a process of active listening;• identifying the narrative processes used by the storyteller;• paying attention to the language of the text;• acknowledging the context in which the text was produced; and• identifying moments in the text where something unexpected is

happening.2. Developing interpretive stories using the views highlighted through the mul-

tiple lenses.

The first of these two stages is discussed in this article and the second inPart 2 of the series. The following section begins this discussion by introduc-ing the lenses of narrative processes, language, context, and moments.


TABLE 1Elements of My Research Framework

Nature of research—Research as living practice:Research is “a product of human action” (Polkinghorne 1997:9) characterized by “blurringthe boundaries between research and everyday life” (Norris 1997:89).

Nature of knowledge:Knowledge is situated, constructed, transient, partial, and provisional; characterized bymultiple voices, perspectives, truths, and meanings and a tolerance for paradox, contradic-tion, and ambiguity.

Purpose of research:The purpose is to explore individuals’ understandings of their experience in the context oftheir everyday life.

Nature of the research design—Stories are us:“Human experience is basically storied experience: that humans live out stories and arestorytelling organisms. . . . One of the best ways to study human beings is to come to gripswith the storied quality of human experience” (Connelly and Clandinin 1994:4046).

Nature of the research process—Storying stories:Stories are a way of researching, a way of writing, and a way for readers to respond to theresearch—a process of storying stories. The outcomes of this process are not “third personobjective representations” (Polkinghorne 1995:19) but rather, represent the outcomes of aseries of reconstructions (Riessman 1993). The initial reconstruction is by the participantas she or he recalls an experience and then describes that experience for the researcher.The researcher then reconstructs this experience as she or he transcribes, analyzes, andinterprets the experience. A further level of reconstruction occurs as the reader reads andreacts to the experience. This process is simultaneously situated in a particular everydaycontext and within a wider cultural/social context.

VIEWING THE INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTTHROUGH MULTIPLE LENSES

Introducing the Lenses

Making sense of a life involves exploring the complex interactionsbetween self and society constructed through language and mediated by theparticular material conditions of our lives over time. Meaning is continuallyconstructed and reconstructed. This construction and reconstruction occurswithin, and is made visible through, stories. We not only live our lives as astory, as we tell our stories we relive, reconstruct, and reinterpret our experi-ence for later retelling and further reconstruction and reinterpretation. Storiesboth reflect experience and are constitutive of experience. As Michael Whiteand David Epston (1990) have argued,

If we accept that persons organise and give meaning to their experiencethrough the storying of experience and that in the performance of these storiesthey express selected aspects of their lived experience, then it follows thatthese stories are constitutive—shaping lives and relationships. (P. 2)

As people tell their stories during an interview, they may also use othernarrative processes (Rosenthal 1993) to enrich these stories and to help thelistener get the point of a story (the reason for its telling). During an inter-view, a storyteller may become reflective—trying to work out the “why?”—attempting to theorize their experience. Often, as the interview proceeds, astoryteller will add information to stories already told, as the conversationstimulates recollection of additional story pieces (a process of augmenta-tion). Sometimes the added part may not be part of an already told story, butmay be an abstracted element from outside a story (a process of argumenta-tion). Such elements bring to a story other factors the narrator feels add mean-ing to the story. Storytellers may also take the time to describe particular peo-ple, places, or things in detail. While these descriptions when read alone offerlittle in the way of interpretation or explanation, they do inform the listenerby adding detail to the picture built up through other narrative processes.Looking through the lens of narrative processes provides one view of how thestoryteller constructs and gives meaning to his or her life and alerts theresearcher to the particular meanings the storyteller wishes to convey (thereasons the stories were told).

Language is central to the analysis of an interview transcript because it is“more than a means of communication about reality: it is a tool for construct-ing reality” (Spradley 1979:17; cited in Campbell 1996:263). Language, likenarrative processes, helps us construct “our sense of selves, our subjectivity”

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(Richardson 1994:518). Through this lens, the researcher looks at languageas text and language as a social process. Language as text, as a means of com-munication, is concerned with content, with “people, situations, and ideasthat speakers mean their words to convey” (Riessman 1993:21). As a socialprocess, language functions to construct individual identity and social rela-tionships between people and systems of knowledge and beliefs (Fairclough1992; cited in Grant 1996:139). Language helps the researcher see how thestoryteller speaks about himself or herself, about the relationships in his orher life, and about the environments in which his or her life has been or isbeing lived. Most importantly, this lens allows the researcher to see how thestoryteller “speaks of herself before we speak of her” (Brown and Gilligan1992:27–28).

Stories are not told in a vacuum—they are simultaneously situated withina particular context (situation) and within a wider cultural context. The con-text of situation is the immediate social situation of the storyteller and the lis-tener. In this research, the context is the interview—a conversation con-structed jointly by a particular teller and a particular listener in a “relation ofpower, at a particular historical moment” (Riessman 1993:31). Hence, thecontext of situation includes the autobiographical context each person bringsto the interview (personal context) and the interactional aspects of the rela-tionships between the interview participants (interactional context).

The context of culture is the social, political, cultural, historical, and struc-tural conditions of the wider society in which the stories have been experi-enced, told, and retold. Looking through this lens highlights the social con-structions of reality held within the prevailing cultural fictions (the dominantcollectively held meanings that relate to individual experience). Through thislens, we can explore those “natural,” uncontested, and taken-for-grantedpositions available to women to understand themselves (and thus their lives).We can also explore a woman’s notion of personal agency within subjectiv-ity. We can look for times and places where each woman constructs or recon-structs her sense of self through acts of accommodation, challenge, or resistance.

Often the stories we recall represent significant moments—epiphanies orturning points—that then lead us to tell other stories about what happenedbefore and after these moments. There may also be times during a storywhere particular phrases or key words signify something different or unex-pected is happening. Whether these moments occur as stories or within sto-ries, they are times that “alter and shape the meanings persons give to them-selves and their life projects” (Denzin 1994:510).

To summarize, narrative processes, language, context, and moments aredimensions people use to construct and reconstruct their identities and to givemeaning to their lives. Looking through these lenses, we can see more of the


life as constructed by each individual and reduce the distance between anindividual’s understandings of his or her life and our interpretations of his orher life. What does this involve?

The following sections describe the process of looking through each of thelenses. Each description includes examples drawn from Anna’s interviewtranscript. I conclude the article with my response to the following question:So, why multiple lenses?

ACTIVE LISTENING

As active listener, the researcher listens to the tape several times. Whilelistening, the researcher asks,

• Who are the characters in this conversation?• What are the main events? Where/When do they occur?• As researcher, how am I positioned during this conversation?• As researcher, how am I positioned in relation to the participant?• As postgraduate student, how am I positioned in relation to the participant?• How am I responding emotionally and intellectually to this participant?

As is often the case in part-time doctoral studies, many months may havepassed since the interview conversation occurred. Through active listening,the researcher can reconnect with the storyteller, the story, and his or herreactions to both of these. The researcher thinks about “how and where someof her own assumptions and views—whether personal, political, or theoreti-cal—might affect her interpretation of the respondent’s words, or how shelater writes about the person” (Mauthner and Doucet 1998:127).

NARRATIVE PROCESSES

Here the researcher reads the transcript locating the different narrativeprocesses used by the storyteller: stories, description, argumentation, aug-mentation, and theorizing.

Identifying the narrative processes begins by locating stories. Stories arecharacterized by

• recognizable boundaries—a beginning and an end;• within these boundaries a series of linked events/actions (the complicating

action) that are responses to the question, And then, what happened? and

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• that together these give the story a unity of purpose and a coherence recogniz-able as the point of the story—why the story was told.

The researcher then identifies those aspects of each story that constitutethe basis for interpretation: the abstract (summarizes the point); the evalua-tion (why it was told, highlights the point); the orientation (who, what, where,when); the series of linked events/actions that are responses to the question,And then, what happened? and the coda (brings the story to a close) (Riessman1993). The evaluation and the abstract answer the question, Why was thestory told? The answer to this question becomes the title of the story. This wasa real holiday is an example of a story from Anna’s interview transcript. Thisexample illustrates each of the elements of a story described above.

This Was a Real Holiday

I lived in Hong Kong for six months so it wasn’t that faraway to go to Borneo for a holiday. It was a honeymoon.I actually got married. I’m separated now.

Orientation

That was pretty amazing. This was a real holiday I think.Abstract

We stayed in a hotel. We walked on the beach and canoedout to an island. We climbed Mt. Kinabalue, walkedthrough rainforest and above the treeline, saw pitcherplants. We ate Chinese food with lumps of ginger in it. Aswe drove back on the bus it was raining, I was petrified.

Then, what happened?

That’s what I call a proper holiday. I don’t know,I suppose it’s just a stereotype image of people going onholiday. I don’t know where it comes from, but you goaway somewhere and stay in a hotel.

Evaluation

Probably from advertising.Coda

Next, the researcher identifies the descriptions, argumentations, augmen-tations, and theorizing and asks, What is their relationship to the stories told


in the text and to each other? Knowing what other sorts of text are present inthe transcript helps the researcher understand how that text fits in relation tothe stories told. For example, did the participant tell more about somethingshe has spoken about in a story (augmentation)? What does it add to the story?How could it be included in the story? Is the participant reflecting, giving anopinion, or trying to work out something (theorizing)? What does this add tothe stories told? Does it indicate a particularly problematic issue for theparticipant?

The following examples illustrate the narrative processes of theorizingand augmentation in Anna’s interview transcript. In the theorizing excerpt,Anna reflects on her experience of a “real” holiday. In the second excerpt,Anna gives the reader additional information about her leisure and how itchanged over the years she has been studying.

Theorizing

Coralie: Was that the same sort of holiday then as the other one you mentionedwhere you went sailing and that or was it different?

Anna: No, this was a real holiday I think it was (pause) I don’t know I supposecos we (pause) it was actually a honeymoon I actually got married and ahmseparated now but ahm I guess cos it was going to another country and westayed in a hotel that what I call a proper holiday.

Augmentation

Coralie: So leisure changed when you became an undergraduate student. Isthat when the change occurred?

Anna: It changed from high school and then when I first left high school and Iwas working and then and when I went to uni and then since I was a seriousstudent and a postgraduate student ahm I think that the state I’m in now issimilar to a stage when I was at high school and then there was a stage in themiddle where it involved a lot of drinking going out with friends and thatsort of things but I guess yeah ahm (pause) it hasn’t really changed sinceI’ve been a postgraduate student but since I’ve been really interested in mystudies.

The stories are then enriched with the additional information. Sometimes,the researcher is given sufficient information through the other narrative pro-cesses used by a participant to construct a story or stories. The enriched sto-ries and the constructed stories are returned to the participant, accompaniedby a letter asking the participant to respond to the following questions:

• Does what I have written make sense to you?• How does this account compare with your experience?

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• Have any aspects of your experience been omitted? Please include these wher-ever you feel it is appropriate.

• Do you wish to remove any aspect(s) of your experience from this text?• Please feel free to make any other comments.

When the stories are returned, the researcher reflects and responds to theparticipant’s comments, for example, by changing the stories or negotiatingthe stories with the participant. Anna returned her stories without modification.

LANGUAGE

Looking through this lens, the researcher asks the following questions:What features of the language of the interview transcript impact on its inter-pretation? and How do they impact? Three language features are consideredat this stage: What is said, how it is said, and what remains unsaid.

1. What is said includes the following:• word groupings or phrases that indicate the relationship of self and society

(e.g., of course, it was natural that);• frequently used words (e.g., leisure time);• words that assume common understandings and uncontested “knowl-

edge” (e.g., you know);• words that make space for thought (e.g., uhm);• specialized vocabularies (the way particular groups/communities use

ordinary words in special ways or use variant of common words that arespecific to their community);

• words around the key words in the research question: leisure, work, study,and time; and

• words participants use to talk about their self-image, relationships, andtheir environment.

Some examples of what is said from Anna’s interview transcript follow.This extract includes examples of words assuming common understanding(e.g., uni, that sort of thing), frequently used words (e.g., I guess, yeah), andwords making space for thought (e.g., ahm).

Coralie: So leisure changed when you became an undergraduate student. Isthat when the change occurred?

Anna: It changed from high school and then when I first left high school and Iwas working and then and when I went to uni and then since I was a seriousstudent and a postgraduate student ahm I think that the stage I’m in now issimilar to a stage when I was at high school and then there was a stage in themiddle where it involved a lot of drinking going out with friends and that


sort of thing but I guess yeah ahm (pause) it hasn’t really changed since I’vebeen a postgraduate student but since I’ve been really interested in mystudies.

2. How it is said—structural features such as the following:• active/passive voice;• speech functions (questions, commands, statements, exclamations);• where the personal pronouns we, I, and you are used by the participant,

particularly in relation to herself (How does she see and present herself?Where does she shift between these pronouns?);

• repetition, false starts, and hedging; and• metaphors, similes, analogies, and other kinds of imagery.

The following excerpt illustrates Anna’s use and interchanges of the per-sonal pronouns you and I.

Coralie: But if you went to Sydney and stayed in a hotel would that be aholiday?

Anna: I don’t know it just depended on what we did when we were there(laughter) ahm (pause) maybe it’s something to do with leisure that ifyou’re going there just to have fun and relax and enjoy yourself (pause) itwould be a holiday but if you were going for a conference or (pause) onbusiness or something or to visit with someone I guess it would be a trip(pause).

3. What is unsaid, but signaled in the text— performance features such as thefollowing:• periods of silence, noting the length of the silences; and• tone, speed of delivery, inflections, emotions, volume, and hesitations.

In the following extract, for example, both long and short pauses arepresent.

Coralie: So if you’ve got leisure and work and sometimes they overlap a littlebit, where does study fit in that . . .

Anna: (long pause) I guess study is work, but some work some work is enjoy-able (short pause) and some work isn’t enjoyable (long pause) so study(short pause) ahm (short pause). Mm, I don’t know.

CONTEXT

Looking through this lens, the researcher is interested in the context ofculture and the context of situation.

Paying attention to the context of culture involves asking,

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• What cultural fictions does each woman draw on to shape or construct her viewof what counts as being a person?

• How have these ways of talking, thinking, and being positioned each woman?Where does she conform to them? Where does she resist or challenge them?Where does she rewrite them?

The following extract illustrates our discussion of the cultural fiction ofholidays. As our conversation progresses, Anna starts to think about the ele-ments that define what for her is a real holiday. She proceeds hesitantly, witha great deal of uncertainty, as she tries to work out what she means.

Coralie: What was your holiday memory?Anna: I wrote two the first one was about going camping with school friends

and that was on the east coast of Tasmania and about going to a group andwe were drinking and smoking at night and we went sailing on a catamaranduring the day and I really enjoyed it because I joined a family to eat dinner(pause) and the other one (pause) the other one was a holiday in Borneo(laughter) well I lived in Hong Kong for six months so it wasn’t that faraway to go over there for a holiday so that was pretty amazing.


Anna: No this was a real holiday I think it was (pause) I don’t know I supposecos we (pause) it was actually a honeymoon I actually got married and ahmseparated now but ahm I guess cos it was going to another country and westayed in a hotel that what I call a proper holiday.

Coralie: What makes a proper or to use the term real holiday?Anna: (Laughter) I don’t know. I suppose it’s just the stereotypes of image and

people going on holiday I don’t know where it comes from but you go awaysomewhere and stay in a hotel probably from advertising and ahm (pause)the other one was going camping it’s not (pause) you didn’t think of it it is aholiday but (pause) at the time when I was planning to go I didn’t reallythink of it as going on holiday I thought of it as going camping (laughs)(pause) yeah I don’t know.

Coralie: Maybe you mentioned . . . the holiday in Borneo as being different? Isthat relevant to making it a real holiday?

Anna: Cos it was to another country.Coralie: Different from where you’re living.Anna: Yeah probably yeah and I think because we stayed somewhere—we

stayed in a hotel.

With respect to the context of situation, the researcher can ask of thetranscript,

• What can I learn from the participant’s response to my opening question and tomy wind-up question?


• What can I learn from the participant’s reactions (verbal and nonverbal)? Frommy reactions?

• What can I learn about the interaction between the interview participants fromthe appearance of the text? For example, what is the number of questions andanswers and what is their length? Who asks the questions? What type of ques-tions are asked? What is the location of questions in the interview transcript?Who interrupts whom, and where and how frequently does this occur?

• What can I learn about our interaction from what is not said in the text? Forexample, does the participant ask me a question without giving me time torespond? Where do I pause before asking a question or responding to a query?Are there places where I feel I could have responded but didn’t?

For example, the following exchange presents Anna’s response to myopening question. This response is very short and ends in a pause. Her responseleads me to wonder, Will this shortness and frequency of pauses be indicativeof all her answers? Does this say something about the topic, about Anna’sfeelings/interest in the topic, about me as a researcher, about Anna’s expecta-tions of an interview?

Coralie: Tell me about leisure in your life before you became a postgraduatestudent.

Anna: Ah yep (pause) before I was a postgraduate student pretty similar to nowactually ahm what I normally do is ahm ride my bike on weekends ah go forwalks in the nature park and watch a bit of TV and ahm talk to my flat matesor talk to other friends (pause).

MOMENTS

Moments may be signified by key words or phrases, descriptions of eventsor stories, or other forms of discourse. Sometimes, they are memories retoldduring the interview; on other occasions they occur spontaneously during theconversation. Some but not all of these may be “radical” moments (Denzin1994:510), such as epiphanies or turning points. Some are more common-place (such as those from Anna’s transcript presented below), but they stillimpact on the meaning of the story being told. These may be unexpected (sur-prising moments, moments of strangeness, moments of insight, puzzlingmoments). They may be moments of intense joy or sadness or self-questioningmoments (personal reflective moments, contradictory or confusing moments).

A Personal Reflective Moment

Coralie: You kind of need to keep talking about it to work it out.Anna: Yeah, I think so—yeah I’m really having to think.

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A Moment of Uncertainty


Anna: No, this was a real holiday. I think it was (pause) I don’t know I supposecos we (pause) it was actually a honeymoon. I actually got married and ahmseparated now but ahm I guess cos it was going to another country and westayed in a hotel that what I call a proper holiday.

SO, WHY MULTIPLE LENSES?

Viewing interview transcripts through multiple lenses recognizes that noone lens can reveal both the individuality and the complexity of a life. Multi-ple realities suggest multiple perspectives. Looking through the multiplelenses of active listening, narrative processes, language, context, andmoments provides this multiplicity of perspectives. Narrative processes, lan-guage, context, and moments are dimensions people use to construct andreconstruct their identities and so give meaning to their lives.

Constructing and reconstructing subjectivity involves a process of con-scious and unconscious accommodation and resistance. This accommoda-tion and resistance is the outcome of complex interactions between the avail-able discourses about the “self” and the discourses society makes available tous. These interactions are constructed through language and mediated by theparticular material conditions of our lives over time. Meaning is negotiatedand continually in process as we adopt particular positions, reject others thathave little resonance for our lives, and strive for coherency in the stories wetell. Through multiple lenses, competing, contradictory, or complementarypositions of an individual may be revealed, as may how that individualaccommodates, challenges, or resists these positions over a life. Multiplelenses thus reveal the “in process” nature of a life. They reveal both the indi-vidual and collective nature of an individual’s experiences at a point in timeand over time.

CODA

To read about how I constructed Anna’s interpretive story Lei-sure. . . . yeah, I don’t know. Gosh, it’s really making me think using the viewsof her interview transcript highlighted through the lenses of active listening,narrative processes, language, context, and moments, continue on to readPart 2 in this series.


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CORALIE MCCORMACK is an associate lecturer in the Centre for the Enhancement ofLearning, Teaching and Scholarship (CELTS) at the University of Canberra, Australia.She is completing her Ph.D. using personal narratives to explore female postgraduateresearch students’ perceptions of their leisure while they are postgraduate students. Sheis also studying how female academics balance their multiple roles in a rapidly changinghigher education context. Among her recent publications are “Paths, Phases, Jugglingand Balancing Acts: How Women Academics Understand their Personal Experience ofPostgraduate Study” (with B. Pamphilon, in Quality in Postgraduate Research: MakingEnds Meet, Proceedings of the 2000 Quality in Postgraduate Research Conference,edited by M. Kiley and G. Mullins, 191–202. Adelaide, Australia, April 13–14, 2000. TheAdvisory Centre for University Education, University of Adelaide, Australia) and“Memories Bridge the Gap between Theory and Practice in Women’s Leisure Research,”Annals of Leisure Research, 1998.


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