Reflections on Learning, Life and Work: Completing Doctoral Studies in Mid and Later Life and Career

This book records the stories of doctoral study experiences of the twenty-two writers. These research degree experiences are embedded in the lives and careers of the writers and the twenty-two distinctive projects draw from those individual lives and careers. The authors write about meeting the continuing demands of older and younger family members and of their struggles with ill health and work place demands while working through their studies. There is also the joy of coming to see themselves and being seen as research scholars and supporting and celebrating with others as they move through candidature proposals and ethics applications to graduation. Apart from the stories that bring the writers to their particular projects and that colour their individual journeys, storying methodology is most often selected for the research, all of which is undertaken within the arts, humanities and education. Phenomenology, narrative, ethnography are central to most of the studies and the detailed accounts of each research topic, methods and outcomes locate each of the research projects in rich bodies of knowledge. Valued writers and readers in these fields, Mary Beattie and Elaine Martin have read each reflection and provided in turn a foreword and an afterword which bookend the volume and further enrich these reflections on learning, life and work.

Maureen A. Ryan is a producer based in New York concentrating on feature films and documentaries. She is co-producer of James Marsh s Man on Wire, a documentary about Philippe Petit, the wire-walker who stunned the world when he walked between the World Trade Center towers in 1974. It won the 2009 Academy Award for Best Documentary and the 2009 BAFTA Award for Best British Film. Other awards include the Sundance Jury Prize for World Cinema documentary and Audience Award for World Cinema documentary, the Critics Choice Award, the IDA Award, the National Board of Review, the NY Film Critics Award, the PGA Award, and the LA Film Critics Award. Their latest documentary Project NIM premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and won Best Director of World Cinema Documentary and was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary that year. It screened theatrically in the US and UK and premiered on HBO in the winter of 2012. Ryan is Co-Executive Producer of the television pilot Stanistan for USA Network/Universal Cable Productions. She is also the Re-Creations Producer for Johanna Hamilton s new feature documentary 1971 that premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival and is touring the film festival circuit. Her other Re-creations credit is for Alex Gibney s feature documentary Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God. The film had a US theatrical run, won the Peabody Award, the BFI Grierson Award at the London Film Festival, and was shortlisted for this year s Academy Award for Best Documentary. It premiered on HBO in February 2013. She is also a producer of the independent narrative film Bomber which premiered at the 2009 SXSW Film Festival, has won numerous film festival awards, and is currently distributed by Film Movement in the US and Distribuzione Indipendente in Italy. Written, directed, and produced by Paul Cotter, it was shot in Brighton, UK and Bad Zwischenahn, Germany. She produced a short film Red Flag that was written and directed by Sheila Curran Dennin. The film won awards at the Palm Springs International Shorts Fest, the Woods Hole Film Festival, and the Taos Shortz Film Festival. Ryan s other producer credits include The Gates, Grey Gardens: From East Hampton to Broadway, The Team, The King, Torte Bluma, Last Hand Standing, and Wisconsin Death Trip. Additional awards have included a Peabody award, three AICP awards, a Billboard award, a Freddie, a CMA award, an ACM award, 11 Addys, and 5 Tellys. She is the Producing Concentration Supervisor and Associate Professor at Columbia University s Graduate Film Program. In addition to various U.S. cities, Ryan has taught seminars in Amman, Jordan, Beijing, China, Brussels, Belgium, and Kinshasa, Congo. Her book titled Producer to Producer: A Step-by-Step Guide to Low Budget Independent Film Producing was published by Michael Wiese Productions and has been translated into Japanese and will soon be published in China. The companion website is at www.ProducerToProducer.com.