About Us

Purpose

The International Qualitative Research Network is a network of qualitative research leaders from around the world. It is based in the School of Nursing, Faculty of Health and Social Development at the University of British Columbia Okanagan Campus in Kelowna, British Columbia. The purpose of IQRT is to build qualitative research capacity, with an emphasis on local scholars and those who live, study, and work in developing countries. The primary strategies for achieving this purpose are webinars and workshops. Recordings of webinars are publicly available under the archive tab on our website. Our website also includes a list of resources for qualitative researchers, and upcoming events related to qualitative research being offered by IQRT and other groups.

For further information, please contact us.

Advisory Board Members

	Sally Thorne	Sally Thorne, RN, PhD, FCAHS, FAAN, FCAN, University of British Columbia School of Nursing. Sally is a champion of applied qualitative methodologies within the applied and practice disciplines. In particular, she has focused attention of building study design logic on the basis of disciplinary rather than theoretical epistemologies. She has published widely on Interpretive Description methodology, qualitative meta-synthesis, and knowledge integration, and been an active participant in the international community of qualitative methods educators and advocates throughout a long career.
	Eric Li	Eric Li is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Management of the University of British Columbia – Okanagan campus. His research interests include social enterprise and social innovation, not-for-profit marketing, pro-social behaviour, multicultural marketing and consumption, consumer well-being, health promotion, consumer privacy, food economy and market system, fashion and popular culture, and digital marketing and social media marketing. His work has been published and presented in a number of academic journals and conferences such as the International Marketing Review,American Behavioral Scientist, Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, Management Decision, Consumption Market & Culture, International Journal of Consumer Studies, Journal of Cleaner Production, Land Use Policy,as well as conferences such as the Association for Consumer Research annual conference, the American Marketing Association annual conference, Academy of Management Conference, and the Consumer Culture Theory Conference.
	Joan Bottorff	Dr. Joan L. Bottorff is a Professor in the School of Nursing in the Faculty of Health and Social Development on the University of British Columbia Okanagan campus. Her program of research is in the field of health promotion with a focus on developing gender-sensitive approaches to enhance cancer prevention. Her research as resulted in novel programs related to tobacco cessation, and supporting physical activity and healthy eating for men. She is Editor-in-Chief of Global Qualitative Nursing Research, an open access journal published by SAGE that supports the dissemination of qualitative research related to nursing practice, responses to health, illness, and disability, health promotion, healthcare delivery, and global issues that affect nursing and healthcare.
	Amanda Kenny	Emeritus Professor Amanda Kenny is a nurse and midwife. She led the development of Australia’s largest multidisciplinary rural health school and was the inaugural Violet Marshman Professor of Rural Health. Her research involves extensive partnerships with vulnerable populations, and she is an expert in primary health, health services research, and rural health.  She is internationally recognised for her expertise in multidisciplinary participatory action research, deliberative decision making, innovative digital methods, and co-design. Amanda is a leader in knowledge translation and qualitative research methods.  She is Editor in Chief of the highly ranked Elsevier journal, Nurse Education Today.
	Stuart Lane	Associate Professor Stuart Lane is the Director of the MD program, Sydney Medical School, and a Senior Staff Specialist in Intensive Care Medicine at Nepean Hospital. His primary research interest is phenomenological analysis of human experience. He has implemented the first Intensive Care Unit follow-up clinic in NSW, developing knowledge and theory to optimise patient experience and management whilst they are in the ICU and beyond. He is also a keen ocean swimmer, and in 2017 he swam the English Channel, raising $12500 to assist research into chronic critical illness.
	Lydia Aziato	Lydia Aziato is the Dean, School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Ghana.  She has been a nurse for over 20 years.  She has a specialty certificate in Oncology Nursing from the cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton, Canada and completed in 2006. Subsequently she graduated with a PhD in Nursing from the University of the Western Cape, South Africa in 2013. She holds both local and international positions in nursing organizations such as Sigma Theta Tau. She also serves on a number of boards and committees and she is an external examiner for a number of Universities in Ghana and internationally. She has published in many credible international peer-reviewed journals and is a reviewer for more than ten credible journals. Her research interests span across pain management, cancer and surgical nursing. She has advanced skills in qualitative research and curriculum development. She is interested in training and mentoring young nurses and students to enhance their skills and independence.
	Linda Liebenberg	Linda Liebenberg, PhD., is a researcher and evaluator with a core interest in children and youth with complex needs and how best to promote positive life outcomes. Linda does this using mixed methods and qualitative approaches within a PAR framework. She especially makes use of arts-based and image-based approaches as a means of highlighting young people’s lived experiences and knowledge regarding how to survive. Linda provides workshops and consultation internationally on the use of these methods. She is also currently Editor-in-Chief for the International Journal of Qualitative Research and sits on the editorial board for various journals, including the Journal of Biographical Research,  the South African Journal of Education, Educational Research for Social Change and the Journal of Positive Psychology & Wellbeing.
	Guendalina Graffigna	Guendalina Graffigna is a Full Professor at the Catholic University of the Sacred Hearth of Milan (Italy) where she is member of the Coordination Committee of the PhD School in Psychology and of the Ethics Committee of the Department of Psychology. From 2017, she is the Director of the Consumer, Food & Health Research Center – EngageMinds Hub of the Catholic University of the Sacred Hearth of Milan and Director of the Executive Master in Patient Advocacy Management. Before her actual appointments, Guendalina has been a Post Doc fellow (A.A. 2007-2008) and visiting professor in Qualitative Methods (A.A. 2008-2009) at the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology, University of Alberta – CA with which she still collaborate for several research and teaching initiatives. Beside her academicals appointments she is currently Director of the Study and Training Centre of ASSIRM (Italian Association of Marketing Research Institutes and member of the Executive Committee of the Italian Association of Psychology. From 2018 she has been acting as evaluator for the Italian National Abilitation to the Academic Career (ASN- MIUR) and from November 2020 she is member of the Italian Procedure of Academic Quality Assessment (VQR – MIUR) er research and scientific activities are mainly devoted to the study of patient engagement, food consumption, behavioral change for health promotion, vaccine hesitancy and consumers intelligence. She has spent the last 10 years of activity in constructing bridges between scientific/academic knowledge and at present she is coordinating an intra and inter university reflection for contributing to priorities and policies discussions on stakeholders’ engagement in the healthcare and in the agri-food sector. She is a qualitative research specialist with particular focus on discourse analysis, online qualitative research and focus groups. In 2014 she validated the PATIENT HEALTH ENGAGEMENT Scale: the first measure of the patients’ psychological experience of engagement in chronic care management, which is now widely adopted by healthcare and research organizations worldwide. According to the international scientific database Scopus she is the most productive scholar in the domain of PATIENT ENGAGEMENT.
	Hanne Konradsen	Hanne Konradsen is a Professor in Nursing at Herlev and Gentofte University Hospital and University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and Associate Professor at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm Sweden. Her research interests are related to i) the basic needs when becoming a patient, ii) involvement of families in nursing care and iii) innovation in nursing. She had her basic training as a phd student in Grounded Theory, and have since then been involved in a broader variety of qualitative research.
	Shona Hilton	Shona Hilton is Professor of Public Health Policy and Deputy Director of the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit at the University of Glasgow. She has a MSc in Health Education and Promotion, and a PhD in Social Sciences. She is an Editor for PLoS One, Associate Editor for BMC Public Health, co-convener for the BSA Scottish Medical Sociology Group and regularly sits as an appointed panel member for various grant funders. She has published over 100 scientific papers and recently co-edited a book in this field “The media and public health: where next for critical analysis?”. Her research largely focuses on contemporary issues facing biomedical, social and public health debates to help improve the timely translation of scientific knowledge into policy and public communications. As part of timely knowledge exchange, Professor Hilton is well connected as a member and advisor on national public health and third sector organisations, including as a member of the Scottish Parliament Cross Party Group ‘Improving Scotland’s Health: 2021 and Beyond’.
	Catherine Houghton	Catherine Houghton is a senior lecturer in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, National University of Ireland Galway. Catherine’s research interests are primarily around qualitative research methodologies, qualitative evidence synthesis and the integration of qualitative research in trials. Catherine is Co-Chair of the Qualitative Research in Trials Centre: QUESTS (www.quests.ie ) and co-lead of the Qualitative Research in Trials (QRiT) target group, within the MRC-NIHR Trials Methodology Research Partnership(TMRP).   Catherine is also a research associate for Evidence Synthesis Ireland, and a member of the Emergency Evidence Response Service (EERS) in response to COVID-19. She has led and co-authored a number of qualitative syntheses including a recently published Cochrane rapid review in response to COVID-19.
	Patrick A. Palmieri	Prof. Dr. Patrick Palmieri is a global health expert and research methodologist with 25+ years of experience in academia and industry. Currently, he is the director for Evidence-Based Health Care South America: A Joanna Briggs Institute Affiliated Group and the director for the Centro Sudamericano de Investigaciones Cualitativas at the Universidad Norbert Wiener (Peru). In addition, Dr. Palmieri teaches a series of research methods courses at the College of Graduate Health Studies, A.T. Still University (United States) and he has served as the chair for more than 20 doctoral committees. He was the first nurse certified as a senior researcher by the Peruvian National Committee for Science, Technology, and Innovation (CONCYTEC). Dr. Palmieri is an associate editor for BMC Nursing and BMC Public Health and a member of the editorial boards for Nursing Open and Policy, Politics, & Nursing Practice. Notably, Dr. Palmieri was the first Peruvian inducted into the American Academy of Nursing, the America College of Health Care Executives, and the International Society for Health Care Quality. He was awarded an honorary doctoral degree from the Universidad Maria Auxiliadora (Peru) and the key to the City of Arequipa (second largest city in Peru) as a distinguished visiting scholar. In his spare time, Dr. Palmieri enjoys playing tennis, reading non-fiction books, and spending time at the beach with his young daughter.
	Marie Tarrant	Dr. Marie Tarrant is a Professor and Director of the School of Nursing in the Faculty of Health and Social Development on the UBC Okanagan campus. Her program of research focuses on improving maternal and child health outcomes and has resulted in an extensive publication record on a range of subjects, including breastfeeding and maternal and childhood vaccinations. A strong focus on health promotion and disease prevention in the context of women and children’s health underpins all of Dr. Tarrant’s work. Her research has not only helped to improve health outcomes but has also impacted health service delivery for new mothers, specifically as it relates to improved breastfeeding support in the immediate postpartum period.
	Karin Olson	Dr. Karin Olson is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Nursing, Faculty of Health and Social Development, at the University of British Columbia Okanagan Campus.  She is also a Professor Emerita and Interim Coordinator of the International Institute of Qualitative Methodology in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta.  Dr. Olson’s current research has two main dimensions: the development of an etiological model of fatigue with a focus on intersections among health status, physiological and behavioural markers, and culture; and the impact of shared decision making in clinical settings on symptom management, quality of life, and health care utilization.