Distinguished Scholars
Dr. Maria Mayan
Dr. Maria Mayan has extensive international and national recognised expertise in qualitative methodology. She is the Assistant Director of Women and Children's Health, Community University Partnership for the Study of Children, Youth, and Families program, Professor and Associate Dean Research for the Faculty of Extension. Dr. Mayan is a community-based researcher and qualitative methodologist and has studied, wrote about, and conducted qualitative research since the early 1990s. She spent over ten years at the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology learning and teaching qualitative inquiry locally and internationally. She was the Director for the CIHR funded EQUIP training program (A training program to enhance qualitative understanding of illness processes and prevention) for 5 years. Her community-based research interests are in the area of partnerships and knowledge translation and how citizens, community-organizations, governments and universities can work together to improve health outcomes. She has extensive publications in the area of qualitative research, including her book, Essentials of Qualitative Inquiry (2009) published by Left Coast Press.
Dr. Michael Agar (1945 - 2017)
Michael Agar received his Ph.D. in linguistic anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. An honorary Woodrow Wilson Fellow, NIH Career Award recipient, and currently Fulbright Senior Specialist, he is professor emeritus at the University of Maryland, College Park, as well as an associate at Anthropocaos at the University of Buenos Aires. In 2004 he was presented with the Leadership Award in Qualitative Inquiry by the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology. He now works independently as Ethknoworks LLC in northern New Mexico. Kurt Lewin provides the motto: There is nothing as practical as a good theory (See www.ethknoworks.com). His books include The Professional Stranger, Language Shock, Dope Double Agent: The Naked Emperor on Drugs, and a book in process, Culture: An Upgrade. He recently completed a seven year NIH grant on illegal drug epidemics and now works on projects involving organizational development, second language, and environmental politics, as well as running workshops in ethnographic method, agent-based modeling and discourse analysis.
Dr. D. Jean Clandinin
Jean Clandinin (BA University of Alberta, MEd University of Alberta, PhD University of Toronto) is a Professor and Director of the Centre for Research for Teacher Education and Development (CRTED) in the Faculty of Education. The CRTED was established in 1991 as a Faculty wide centre for research for teacher education. The Centre draws together diverse people, including graduate students from across campus, faculty, research assistants, principals, social workers, medical personnel, and teachers. Many members of the CRTED have been involved with IIQM activities and conferences. Since 1997, Jean Clandinin has been a University of Alberta Senior Scientist for the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology. She presented several times at Thinking Qualitatively and Advances in Qualitative Research conferences. Several of her former doctoral students have had their dissertations published by Qual Institute Press. She has also worked closely on the outstanding dissertation award committee.
Dr. Alex Clark
Alex Clark's research draws on complexity theory to research aspects of heart disease - it has been published in some of the world's most influential journals, including: the British Medical Journal, Heart, Social Science & Medicine, The Lancet, Journal of Advanced Nursing and Sociology of Health & Illness. This work uses qualitative and quantitative methods, includes systematic review, and incorporates theory. For four years he was Co-Chair of Qualitative Health Research, the largest conference of its type in the world. He has contributed to IIQM via chairing its Board (2011-2016), facilitating numerous workshops, and both editing and co-editing the International Journal of Qualitative Methods. He chairs or has served on numerous scientific grant review panels in Canada. For his contributions to the development of young scientists across disciplines, he was recognized in 2011 as a World Economic Forum Young Scientist / Young Global Leader.
Dr. Lisa M. Given
Lisa M. Given, PhD, is Associate Dean, Research and Development, and Professor in the Faculty of Health, Arts and Design, Swinburne University of Technology (Australia). She is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculties of Arts and Education at the University of Alberta (Canada) and in the School of Information Studies, Charles Sturt University (Australia). A former Director of the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology, Lisa has received numerous research grants and awards and has published widely on topics related to individuals' information behaviours and qualitative inquiry. Her research interests include individuals' information behaviours, social media use, technology in the workplace, and information issues in higher education. She is the author of 100 Questions (and Answers) About Qualitative Research (2016, Sage) and editor of the 2-volume set, The Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods (2008). For more information, please see http://lisagiven.com.
Dr. Max van Manen
Max van Manen regularly speaks and conducts workshops on phenomenological human science research methods, pedagogy, and related topics of the phenomenology of professional practice. For more than 30 years, he has written on pedagogy and phenomenological methodology. His research interests include the epistemology, ontology, and alterity of professional practice, the phenomenology of writing, the pedagogy of secrets in children's lives, the phenomenology of the body in illness and health, the pedagogical dimension of teaching, the meaning and pedagogical significance of spheres of recognition, pedagogical tactfulness, the primacy of the agogical relation, and the experience of intimacy, interiority, and privacy through writing (online). Max van Manen has developed methodological and inquiry approaches for phenomenological research and writing. He has also translated phenomenological studies from Dutch and German languages into English. Currently, Max van Manen teaches courses in qualitative research methods and pedagogy in the Faculty of Education, the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. He has been visiting professor and taught at several universities in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and China. Max van Manen maintains the websiteand he has initiated and coordinated CPIn (the Curriculum and Pedagogy Institute) He also helped establish the collaborative International Research Center for Phenomenological Pedagogy and Teacher Education at the CNIER (the China National Institute for Educational Research), Beijing, China. Max van Manen's books include Researching Lived Experience; The Tact of Teaching; Childhood's Secrets: Intimacy, Privacy, and the Self Reconsidered (with Bas Levering); The Tone of Teaching; and Writing in the Dark: Phenomenological Studies in Interpretive Inquiry. His publications have been translated into a dozen languages. Awards include the Canadian Society for Studies in Education, (CACS) Life Time Achievement Award; the McCalla Award; the American Education Research Association (Curriculum) Life Time Achievement Award; the Killam Annual Professorship; and the University of Alberta J. Gordin Kaplan Award for Excellence in Research.
Dr. Janice Morse
Janice M. Morse, PhD (Nurs), PhD (Anthro), FAAN is a professor and the Barnes Presidential Endowed Chair at the University of Utah College of Nursing, Professor Emeritus, University of Alberta, Canada, and Honorary Professor, University of Bournemouth. She was the founding Director and Scientific Director of the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology, University of Alberta, and formerly the founding editor for the International Journal of Qualitative Methods. Since 1991 she founded and has since served as the editor for Qualitative Health Research. From 1998-2007 she was the editor for The Qual Press, and is currently editor for the series Developing Qualitative Inquiry and The Basics of Qualitative Inquiry (Left Coast Press). Morse is the recipient of the Episteme Award (Sigma Theta Tau), Sigma Theta Tau's Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame, and received honorary doctorates from the University of Newcastle (Aust) and Athabasca University (Canada). She is the author of 350 articles and 15 books on qualitative research methods, suffering, comforting and patient falls.
Dr. Karin Olson
Karin Olson completed a BSc in Nursing at the University of Alberta (1976), a Masters in Health Science in Health Promotion at the University of Toronto (1981), and a PhD in Educational Psychology at the University of Alberta (1990). She was the Coordinator of Nursing Research at the Cross Cancer Institute from 1990-1998. She was awarded a Career Renewal Award (1999-2001) and a Health Scholar Award (2003-2009), both funded by the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research. She published a re-conceptualization of fatigue that distinguishes it from tiredness and exhaustion, and developed an etiological model of cancer-related fatigue, the Edmonton Fatigue Framework, based on a series of qualitative studies. She used this information to develop a tool to measure adaptive capacity, one of the key variables in the model. She also collaborated with colleagues in Thailand, Italy, and the United Kingdom to explore the socio-cultural construction of symptom experience, using cancer-related fatigue as a model. She has organised several international symposia on cancer-related fatigue and is the past chair of the fatigue working group of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer. Karin Olson held a casual position as a staff nurse with the Edmonton Zone Palliative Care Program community consult team from 2012 to 2015. In 2016, she and colleagues published and edited books entitled Qualitative Health Research as Evidence, published by Springer. She has taught qualitative methods courses in Italy and Thailand, and New Zealand, and is a frequent presenter at Thinking Qualitatively at the University of Alberta. Her areas of expertise in relation to qualitative methods include grounded theory, ethnography, and concept analysis.
Dr. Jude Spiers
Jude Spiers is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Nursing, University of Alberta. Her professional and research education spans degrees in New Zealand, Alberta, and California. Her career has included varied experience nurse, nurse educator, and researcher. Her primary research interests include exploring the experiences of those living with chronic and hidden illness, and how this experience influences the nature of health professional-patient interaction/communication. She is very interested in video as a research tool and has used it to explore home care nurse-client interaction, teenagers' and their parents' experiences of living with diabetes and the nature of the interactions in the health care setting.
Dr. Sally Thorne
Sally Thorne is Professor and former Director at the University of British Columbia School of Nursing in Vancouver, Canada. An academic nursing leader, she teaches graduate courses in the philosophy of science, and has a longstanding interest in the refinement of qualitative research methods so that knowledge pertaining to human subjective experience can be effectively applied within the context of an evidence-based health care practice culture. Her research and writing have focused attention on chronic illness and cancer experience, with a particular emphasis on the impact that dominant scientific orientations and population health ideologies have had on the human experience of seeking and obtaining appropriate care. She is also actively engaged in various community-based and strategic initiatives related to cancer care, chronic illness advocacy, and global health issues, forging linkages between the theoretical enterprise and social action within the health and social sciences. She is Editor-in-Chief of the scholarly journal Nursing Inquiry, and Associate Editor of Qualitative Health Research. Her publications on qualitative methodology include a comprehensive text on applied research (Interpretive Description, Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2008).