Blurring Genres Network: Recovering the Humanities for Political Science and Area Studies - ‘Policy, Stories and Narratives’

Susan Hodgett

Susan Hodgett is Senior Lecturer at Ulster University and has research interests in the narratives of governance. She has published on storytelling and policy analysis which, in Northern Ireland, the European Union saw as “creating no precedent. She has worked with the governments of Canada, NI and the UK in relation to storytelling. During her
PhD (University of Sheffield) she applied the ideas of narrative interpretation to creating the concept of Feelingful Development. She has published in Public Administration amongst others and is currently working on the development of theory for blurring genres in Area Studies (forthcoming- Necessary Travel: New Area Studies and Canada in Comparative Perspective with Patrick James, Lexington Press). Susan served as Deputy Chair of the REF Sub Panel (27) on Area Studies 2010-14 and along with Rod Rhodes and Mark Bevir developed the Blurring Genres Research Network.

Marguerite Cassin

Marguerite Cassin’s work focuses on the institution and managerial organization of the public service in Canada and in Westminster Democracies. She is a specialist in the social organization of knowledge and institutional ethnography. Her research interests include the ideology, social organization and practice of difference, merit, equality, discrimination, race and inequality and human rights as they are structured and practised in the public service. In addition to her expert writing, reports for government and public sector unions she has published monographs, case studies and articles. She is currently leading ethnographies of 12 rural communities in Atlantic Canada looking at programs of local economic development and their impact on rural communities.

Yiannis Gabriel

Yiannis Gabriel is Professor of Organizational Theory at Bath University & has a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. He is well known for his work into organizational storytelling, narratives, leadership, management learning and the culture and politics of contemporary consumption. He has used narratives as a way of studying social and organizational phenomena including leader-follower relations, group dynamics and fantasies, nostalgia, insults and apologies. Another area of his work has been developing a psychoanalytic approach to the study of organizations. He is Senior Editor of Organization Studies and is the author of nine books, most recently The Unmanageable Consumer (with Tim Lang). His enduring fascination as a researcher lies in what he describes as the unmanageable qualities of life in and out of organizations. He blogs regularly at www.yiannisgabriel.com.

Sandford Borins

Sandford Borins is Professor of Public Management at the University of Toronto and a Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research focuses on narrative and innovation. His ten books include The Persistence of Innovation in Government (2014), Governing Fables: Learning from Public Sector Narratives (2011) and Innovating with Integrity (1998). He is currently working on a sequel to Governing Fables dealing with public sector narratives. He is a frequentconference speaker, with recent presentations at the OECD, and to governments in Australia, Mexico, Taiwan, and Peru. He was President of the Canadian Association of Programs in Public Administration from 2003 to 2007 and served as chair of his department from 1990 to 2003. He did his undergraduate studies at Harvard, where he graduated magna cum laude & was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He took a master’s degree in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and received his Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard. He writes a blog on public management, innovation, and narrative atwww.sandfordborins.com.