Research Accelerator 2023: Speakers

Pat Bazeley

Pat Bazeley is Director of Research Support P/L and Adjunct Professor at the Translational Research and Social Innovation Centre at Western Sydney University. Since graduating in psychology, she has worked in community development, as an evaluation researcher, and in academic research development. For almost 30 years, Pat has provided research training and project consulting to academics, graduate students and practitioners representing a wide range of disciplines across Australia and internationally. Pat’s research has focused on qualitative and mixed methods data analysis, the development and performance of researchers, and the well-being of older women. She has published books, chapters, and articles on mixed methods and qualitative data analysis. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Mixed Methods Research and was president of the Mixed Methods International Research Association from 2015–2016.

Vanessa Burholt

Vanessa Burholt is a Professor of Gerontology and a Co-Director of the Centre for Co-Created Ageing Research (CCREATE-AGE), Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Auckland. Vanessa moved to her current position in New Zealand in 2019 and previously, in the UK, she was the Director of the Centre for Innovative Ageing in the College of Human and Health Sciences at Swansea University; Director of the pan-Wales Centre for Ageing and Dementia Research; and founder of the Institute of Creative Ageing Industries (now Awen Institute) in Wales, UK. She has overseen the integration of transdisciplinary research in ageing and dementia, incorporating biological, psycho-social, environmental and social policy perspectives. Vanessa has spent 27 years undertaking research with older people and is committed to co-production of research on ageing and dementia. She has published more than 90 papers and book chapters on co-creation, dementia, rurality, social exclusion, loneliness, relationships, ethnicity and migration. Since 2013, she has been a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (in the UK).

Anuja Cabraal

Dr Anuja Cabraal runs workshops on qualitative research methodology and design, reflexivity, the use of emoji as a tool for analysis and the application of NVivo and Quirkos. Dr Cabraal started her research career close to 20 years ago. For over 10 years, she has been a trainer of NVivo, and her training skills extend to other software, including Quirkos. Dr Cabraal has worked in various qualitative research areas and disciplines. Past research areas include social welfare, migration and mobility, learning and teaching, architecture and psychology. She has also had the privilege of working on larger research projects, including for the Royal Commission.

Chris Deneen

Chris is an Associate Professor and Enterprise Research Fellow in Education Futures, with University of South Australia. He also holds an honorary Principal Research Fellowship with The University of Melbourne. Chris began his career as a middle and high school teacher in the USA; went on to earn his doctorate from Columbia University's Teacher College; and has held several research, teaching, and leadership positions in the culturally diverse contexts of New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia. His research critically examines assessment, feedback, and learning engagement, particularly within higher education. He is especially interested in assessment and feedback-enabling technologies and their complex interactions with educational stakeholders and curricula. Chris adopts a variety of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches and he has authored more than 60 publications on education topics. Chris heads the Change in Complex Systems Research team at The Centre for Change and Complexity in Learning (C3L). In his current position, he focuses on developing research projects and researcher capacities, especially among early-career researchers and teaching-focused academics.

Nigel King

Nigel is an Emeritus Professor in Applied Psychology at the University of Huddersfield. He has a longstanding interest in using qualitative methods, especially in ‘real world’ settings and has written extensively on template analysis, interview methods and visual elicitation methods, amongst other topics. Theoretically, he draws on a variety of experiential traditions, especially phenomenology and personal construct theory. His substantive interests include human meaning-making in relation to nature and outdoor spaces, bereavement experiences and collaborative working in health and social care. Nigel is the author (with Christine Horrocks and Jo Brooks) of Interviews in Qualitative Research (SAGE 2019), and (with Jo Brooks) Template Analysis for Business and Management Students (SAGE 2017).

Sally Pirie

Sally Campbell Pirie (she/her/hers) is an anthropologist, visual artist, and qualitative methodologist. Her research interests include the anthropology of childhood and family, arts-based and comics-based qualitative and ethnographic research methods, gender diversity, and labour force feminisation. She is Principal Investigator of the Gender Moxie Project (funded by the Spencer Foundation), which focuses on understanding transgender and other gender-diverse children’s experiences and resiliencies through an interdisciplinary and art-informed lens. She served as Editor-in-Chief of Anthropology and Education Quarterly for two editorial terms, concluding in 2019; and is now on the editorial teams of Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures and Pedagogy, Culture and Society; and the editorial boards of Qualitative Research, Anthropology and Humanism, and Folk, Knowledge, Place. Sally is currently Professor of Child and Family Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and was a 2021 recipient of the Grinnell College Alumni Award for her distinguished service, embodying the social justice and community service principles of Grinnell College. She authored the Shane series of comic research methods texts (under a previous surname). See www.sallypirie.com.

Christina Silver

Christina Silver (PhD) is Associate Professor (Teaching) in the department of Sociology at the University of Surrey, UK. She has been a researcher and methods trainer since the late 1990s, when she began working with the CAQDAS Networking Project. She now directs the project, designing and delivering training and capacity-building activities, which includes raising awareness about digital tools for qualitative and mixed methods analysis. Christina’s interests coalesce around the relationship between technology and methodology and the adoption of computer-assisted analysis. She has trained more than 12,000 students and researchers over the past 25 years, undertaken numerous research projects and provided consultancy for hundreds of individuals and teams in academic, government, voluntary and commercial contexts. She co-authored Using Software in Qualitative Research: A Step-by-Step Guide with Ann Lewins (SAGE 2014) and Using NVivo for Qualitative Analysis: The Five-Level QDA Method with Nick Woolf (Routledge 2018).

Helen Sword

Helen Sword is scholar, poet and master teacher whose books on writing and writers include Stylish Academic Writing (Harvard 2012), The Writer's Diet (Chicago 2016), Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write (Harvard 2017) and Writing with Pleasure (Princeton 2023). She is Professor Emeritus in the Centre for Arts and Social Transformation at the University of Auckland, a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, and the recipient of several major research and teaching awards. Helen has facilitated writing workshops at more than 100 universities, conferences, and research institutes on every continent except Antarctica. See her website (www.helensword.com) for links to free and low-cost writing resources including books, workshops, retreats, videos, innovative editing tools, and the WriteSPACE, an international writing community with members in 30+ countries.

Daniel Turner

Daniel Turner is the founder and director of Quirkos, a simple tool for qualitative analysis. Daniel started Quirkos after completing his PhD, and a decade in academia working on qualitative health research, with the aim of providing more accessible qualitative software. He regularly writes a blog on qualitative research, hosts a YouTube channel and has contributed to many books and published articles. He is also an invited speaker and trainer on Quirkos and other aspects of qualitative research to a global audience.

Research Accelerator 2023 Speakers