Kathy Charmaz, Ph.D.

Emerita Professor of Sociology 
Director, Faculty Writing Program 
Ph.D., University of California, San Francisco 

Email:
 kathy.charmaz@sonoma.edu 
Web: http://web.sonoma.edu/sociology/faculty/kathy-charmaz.html 

Areas of Expertise: 
Sociological Theory, Social Psychology, Qualitative Methods, Health and Illness, Aging and Dying 

Academic Interests: 
After five years of working on her second edition of Constructing Grounded Theory, Kathy Charmaz, Sociology and the Faculty Writing Program, recently published the book with Sage, London. The considerably expanded second edition offers a fresh view of current ideas and practices in qualitative inquiry and gives researchers detailed practical guidelines for analyzing qualitative data and completing a study.  The book includes examples and comments from researchers in such diverse fields as mathematics education, business, social policy, and tourism, as well as those in fields in which qualitative inquiry has had a long history such as sociology, psychology, education, and nursing.  The first edition of the book received a Critics’ Choice Award from the American Educational Studies Association. It has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, and Portuguese and two more translations are underway.  Kathy also co-edited a four-volume set, Grounded Theory and Situational Analysis, with senior editor, 
Adele E. Clarke. The set appeared in 2014 with Sage, London as part of the Sage Benchmarks in Social Research series.  Consistent with the purpose of the series, these edited volumes are primarily intended for libraries throughout the world that lack access to extensive journal collections.  She also published four chapters, one journal article, and an encyclopedia article in the past year. 

Kathy gave two master classes for doctoral students and faculty at the Bouverie Centre of La Trobe University in Melbourne, one on grounded theory, the other on writing for publication.  In June, she taught an intensive class on grounded theory for doctoral students at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna and was a featured presenter at the Universities of Bologna and Trento’s Summer School for doctoral students.  In July, she gave two professional development classes under the combined sponsorship of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Research Talk and in September she conducted a one-day workshop at the Graduate School of Social Service at Fordham University.  She gave a professional development workshop on writing for publication at University of California, San Francisco in February, a grounded theory workshop at the Couch-Stone Symposium in St. Petersburg, and grounded theory and academic writing workshops in Dublin in May.