First Person Action Research: Living Life as Inquiry

In First Person Action Research Judi Marshall invites her reader to join her in the rich world of first person inquiry: a reflexive approach to life and to one’s own participation in research and learning.

Written as a collage of interrelated chapters, fragments and voices, this is an important meditation on the nature of inquiring action. Judi Marshall’s book provides an accessible introduction to self-reflective practice; exploring its principles and practices and illustrating with reflective accounts of inquiry from the author’s professional and personal life. The book also considers action for change in relation to issues of ecological sustainability and corporate responsibility.

Writing is reviewed as a process of inquiry, and as a way to present action research experiences. Connections are made with the work of the literary authors Nathalie Sarraute and Kazuo Ishiguro to expand the scope of typical academic writing practices.

First Person Action Research is an important and practical resource for students, teachers and practitioners of action research alike. It is a thoughtful and sensitive account of an emerging field in Research Methods.

Judi Marshall is a Professor Emerita of Leadership and Learning at Lancaster University Management School, UK, in the Department of Organisation, Work and Technology.

After a few years as a market researcher, Judi did her PhD on managerial job stress at UMIST, working with Cary Cooper. This led to a series of joint articles and books.  In 1978 Judi joined the Organizational Behaviour Group in the School of Management at the University of Bath. There her interests included women in management, organizational culture change, careers, action research and sustainability. The latter a set of issues and urgent challenges she has been integrating into management education, research and her own organizational action since the 1980s.

Whilst at Bath, publications included: Women Managers: Travellers in a Male World (Wiley, 1984); Women Managers Moving On (Routledge, 1995); explorations of the gendering of corporate social responsibility; attention to ‘responsible’ careers (with Svenja Tams); and a sequence of publications on first person action research, including “Living life as inquiry” (Systemic Practice and Action Research, 1999) – an approach that aspires to treat life as an ongoing experiment.

Working with doctoral and Masters students, and supervising their dissertations, has been a key area of Judi’s expertise. At Bath, she was a core member of the Centre for Action Research in Professional Practice (CARPP) and a tutor on the learning community based Postgraduate Programme in Action Research.  She was a co-designer (with Gill Coleman and Peter Reason) and Director of Studies for the action research-based MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice (1997-2010) for ‘mature’, part-time course participants who were seeking to contribute to change in their organizations, professional fields, own lives and society. The co-authored book Leadership for Sustainability: An action research approach (Routledge, 2011) includes 29 stories of seeking to contribute to systemic change from people who had undertaken the Masters.

Judi moved on from Bath and joined Lancaster University in 2008, in the then Department of Management Learning and Leadership. Her work included teaching, research, writing and organizational action about sustainability, and she especially appreciated belonging to a network of people across the University and local community concerned about these issues. She co-developed the MA in Leadership for Sustainability, and tutored on the inquiry-based MA in Management Learning and Leadership.