Contributors

Mzukisi Qobo

PhD, University of Warwick, UK Associate Professor: Pan African Institute, University of Johannesburg Political Economist - Africa Insights - Global Change

Peter Taylor-Gooby

Peter Taylor-Gooby is Research Professor of Social Policy at the University of Kent’s School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research. He chaired the British Academy New Paradigms in Public Policy Programme (2010/2011) and is Chair of the REF Social Work and Social Policy and Administration panel 2011-15, a Fellow of the British Academy, a Founding Academician at the Academy of Social Sciences and, previously, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Sociology and Social Policy Section. He participated in the Prime Minister’s No 10 ‘progressive consensus’ Round Table and advised the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit between 2009 and 2010. He has also written 23 books, including The Double Crisis of the Welfare State and What We Can Do About It, a new book published by Palgrave.

Michael Rafferty

Mike has undertaken research on work, labour markets, skills development, occupational health and safety, and financial aspects of working life, including mortgage stress, superannuation and retirement. He has also written on the shifting of life course risks from employers and the state to workers and households and the growing role of financial markets in managing those risks. Previously, he was MBA Program Coordinator at the University of Wollongong. Mike holds a PhD in economics and has taught at universities in Australia and Europe.

Paula Jarzabkowski

Paula Jarzabkowski is a Professor of Strategic Management. Her research focuses on strategy-as-practice in complex contexts, such as regulated firms, third sector organizations and financial services, particularly insurance and reinsurance. Her research in this regard has been foundational in the establishment of the field of strategy-as-practice. She is experienced in qualitative methods, having used a range of research designs, including cross-sectional and longitudinal case studies, and drawing on multiple qualitative data sources including interviews, observation, audio and video ethnographic techniques and archival sources to study private and public sector organizations. In particular, this includes the first global ethnography – a programme of research that included the use of video methods - of the reinsurance industry. Professor Jarzabkowski’s career has been marked by a series of prestigious fellowships that have enabled her to conduct detailed ethnographic studies of business problems. For example, in 2006-2007, funded by an AIM Ghoshal Fellowship, she conducted an audio-ethnographic longitudinal study of the paradoxical tensions involved in implementing a major strategic shift in a regulated telecommunications firm. From 2009-2012, she held the inaugural Insurance Intellectual Capital Initiative (IICI) fellowship, under which she conducted a 3-year audio and video ethnography of the global reinsurance market, which extended her skills from organisational to industry-level ethnography. From 2012-2014 she held an EC Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship at Cornell University. Her work has appeared in a number of leading journals including Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Management Studies and Organization Studies and in 2005, she published the first book on strategy-as-practice, Strategy as Practice: An Activity-Based Approach (Sage). In addition, her engagement with industry has made Professor Jarzabkowski skilled in turning academic research into applied outputs, including collaborating with industry in developing research questions, and presenting here research at industry venues and conferences. The relevance of her work was recognised recently with the prestigious 2013 ESRC Outstanding Impact on Business Award. Professor Jarzabkowski has just released a new book with Oxford University Press, entitled 'Making a Market for Acts of God: The Practice of Risk-Trading in the Global Reinsurance Industry' based on her 3-year ethnographic study of the industry.

Ralph Callebert

Ralph Callebert teaches global and African history at Virginia Tech. His research interests are in African and global history, global labor history, gender and households, and the informal economy. He is published in Africa, the Journal of Southern African Studies, the Canadian Journal of African Studies, International Labor and Working-Class History, and Australian Humanities Review. His book manuscript in progress is titled "Global Shipping, Local Lives: Rural households, dock labor, and informal trade in apartheid South Africa". His current research explores how we understand labor and work outside the Global North. He has a Ph.D. in history from Queen’s University in Canada and received an M.A. from the Department of Economic History and Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa.

Scott Bridges

Scott is a PhD candidate at the University of Canberra where he also teaches communications and journalism.