To say that I felt ‘seen’ and inspired is an understatement; this book provides an important template for those for whom atypical career pathways become a reality (by design or necessity). Importantly, this book outlines a shared language to describe and discuss the atypical pathways into, out of, and around professional trajectories, knowledge, skills, and academia. 

Having recently completed a professional doctorate myself, and as I navigate my own atypical push-and-pull extraction from the Secondary Education sector, I found the discussions about the knowledge transfer exchange particularly helpful in understanding the value that sector intersectionality affords us. Being able to code-switch for different stakeholders and communicate across boundaries in ways that translate research into practice is the soft-skill superpower the modern world needs.

This book highlights the fact that, in the fast-paced, ever changing, hyper-interconnected world, the smart and the swift can become empowered in the spaces that lumberingly slow structures and attitudes can’t reach. 

Thank you to Jackie and Linda for articulating and codifying the path, and thank you to all the women who contributed to the study; you have trodden the path for more of us to follow.

You can purchase your own copy here: https://bookstore.emerald.com/practitioner-professor-researcher-reformer-hb-9781837973415.html
using the code EME30 to get a 30% discount.

Jackie Carter and Linda Baines’ book Practitioner, Professor, Researcher, Reformer: Women’s Atypical Stories shines a timely and insightful light into the messy intersections between structure and entrepreneurial perseverance, and a wide range of other structural and sociological dimensions.