Identity in Proper Context

Some researchers discuss identity-related issues as if individuals were beamed in from Mars in some kind of factory set form. Issues that often don't seem to be properly taken into account are the point in the lifespan at which the individual is located (developmental context) and the particular cultural and sociohistorical context that has impacted on the particular individual or group under examination. A number of posts to follow will look at these areas.

Previous Research Experience

During my time in DCU, in addition to my own doctoral work, I also worked as a research assistant/senior research assistant on three substantial qualitative research projects. I worked as a qualitative data analyst on two projects, one that focused on Irish football players returning home after being released by British football clubs and one that sought to explore the psychology of highly successful female accountants. In 2003 I was involved in a five month research project that was funded by a large multinational catering company. The project examined the socialisation of employees in a number of sites in which this organisation operated. The research involved covert participatory observation coupled with a diary method to collect the observations of three researchers. I was highly involved in the data collection, data analysis and report writing stages of this project.

Educational Background

Just a little on my background:

I have a BA in Applied Psychology from University College Cork (www.ucc.ie) and a Phd in Social/Organisational Psychology from Dublin City University (www.dcu.ie).

My doctoral work examined identity-creation and identity-management processes in organisational entrants (mature students entering an undergraduate degree programme) and was conducted under Dr. Finian Buckley (http://www.dcu.ie/info/staff_member.php?id_no=198). The PhD thesis can be found at http://doras.dcu.ie/2359/ .

It was during the evolution of my doctoral work that I became enthralled by the concept of identity, by how people create an identity/identities, by how they manage those identities and by how identities can change over time.

A Beginnging

My name is James Brunton and this blog exists as an outlet for my interest in the field of identity studies, and hopefully as a means of communicating/making contact with similarly minded people.

Let the Identity Studies related blogging begin!

James Brunton