Handbook of Ethnography

Paul Atkinson is a Distinguished Research Professor in Sociology at Cardiff University, where he is also Associate director of the ESRC Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics. His recent publications include: Everyday Arias: An Operatic Ethnography, Risky Relations (Katie Featherstone, Aditya Bharadwaj, Paul Atkinson and Angus Clarke) and the third edition of Ethnography: Principles in Practice (Martyn Hammersley and Paul Atkinson). His new book, written with Sara Delamont and William Housley is Contours of Culture and was published by AltaMira early in 2008. He and Sara Delamont edit the Journal of Qualitative Research. Dr Sara Delamont, DSc Econ, AcSS. read Social Anthropology at Girton College Cambridge, did her PhD at Edinburgh, and lectured at Leicester before moving to Cardiff in 1976. She was the first woman to be President of BERA (the British Education Research Association) and the first woman Dean of Social Sciences at Cardiff. She has done ethnographies in schools, and other settings where teaching and learning take place such as operatic master classes and martial arts studios. With Paul Atkinson she is the Founding Editor of Qualitative Research, and is the author of fourteen books. My research interests are underpinned by a sustained, critical methodological engagement with ethnographic and qualitative research. This includes work on contemporary developments in qualitative data analysis, writing and representation, as well as a focus on of the self and (auto)biography in qualitative inquiry. I have led and been involved in a number of funded projects focussing on qualitative research methods and methodological development. I am currently the Director of the Cardiff Node of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) Qualitative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: Innovation, Integration and Impact (QUALITI) (2005-8).