First Person Action Research

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.  Judi’s contributions to action research have continued since formal retirement, including the book First Person Action Research: Living life as inquiry (Sage, 2016), and an article co-authored with Margaret Gearty – “Living life as inquiry – a systemic practice for change agents” (Systemic Practice and Action Research, online 2020).

Judi Marshall’s enduring practice of living life as inquiry shines through this excellent volume which is at once a handbook, provocation, storybook, and confidant.  A vital resource for those wishing to engage in the messiness of self-reflexive practice, Judi’s text provides wise guidance through its difficulties while pointing to its possibilities for self and systems transformation.

• Introducing first person inquiry′Going Going′ by Philip LarkinPart I - Living Life as InquiryIntegrating action research, systemic thinking and attention to issues of powerAction inquiry and action logicsPart II - Dimensions of InquiryNotions of inquiryDisciplines of inquiryInquiry in actionImages of aspiring inquiry practicePart III – Working with Ideas, Theories and Images as InquiryWorking with academic literaturesDrawing on the work of Nathalie SarrauteSelf-reflection and life narrative in the work of Kazuo IshiguroPart IV - Writing as Inquiry and as RepresentationWriting as inquiryWriting as representationSelectively adopting Freefall Writing preceptsPart V - Stories of InquiryInquiry learning groups and working with feedbackActing for sustainability Seeking to contribute to systemic change, as time slips by‘Work Song’ by Wendell BerryWondering what to do about an elderly relativePart VI – Ongoing InquiryWell, I won’t be doing that againIn reflection