This Handbook has been created by the combined experience of a leading social scientist and a chief executive of a major international research development institution and funder. The editors have recruited a truly global team of contributors to write about the challenges they have encountered in the course of their careers, and to provoke readers to think about how they might respond within their own contexts.
This book will be a standard work of reference for new research leaders, in any discipline or country, looking for help and inspiration. The editorial commentaries extend its potential use in support of training events or workshops where groups of new leaders can come together and explore the issues that are confronting them.
Robert Dingwall is a consulting sociologist through Dingwall Enterprises Ltd and part-time Professor of Sociology at Nottingham Trent University. He draws on more than forty years’ experience as an academic researcher studying health care, legal services, and science and technology policy at the Universities of Aberdeen, Oxford and Nottingham. Over that time, he has held grants and contracts worth more than £7 million (at 2017 prices) in total from the Leverhulme and Wellcome Trusts, ESRC, NERC, MRC, EPSRC, BBSRC, the EU, the UK Department of Health and various NHS/NIHR programmes, the Ministry of Justice, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the Food Standards Agency. These have resulted in 30 books and more than 100 scientific papers. Robert Dingwall is also an experienced manager: he served for five years as head of a large social science department and founded and directed what was one of Europe’s leading research institutes in science and technology studies for 12 years. Robert has been a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences since 2002 and an Honorary Member of the Faculty of Public Health since 2014. He was awarded the 2019 Prize for Contributions to the Socio-Legal Community by the Socio-Legal Studies Association.
Mary McDonnell is executive director and chief operating officer of the Social Science Research Council and leads the Council’s capacity strengthening, fellowships, and Asia-focused work. McDonnell has a PhD in history and master’s degrees in both international affairs and journalism from Columbia University. She worked as a journalist covering Asian and Middle Eastern affairs before joining the Council full time in 1986, where she became founding director of the Abe Fellowship and Vietnam Programs. She is currently leading a decade-long, qualitative and quantitative assessment of population health in rural Vietnam. McDonnell chairs the Board of Trustees of the School for Social Development and Public Policy at Beijing Normal University and serves on the advisory board of the Mobilising the Humanities project of the British Council. She is also a founding member of the board of a new NGO, Resources for Health Equity.