Research philosophy

Malvini Redden ResearchMeaningful work

As an early career scholar, I aim to do meaningful research. To me that means taking on projects that are theoretically rich, useful for people in organizations, and have the ability to solve problems and help communities thrive.

Currently, my pursuit of meaningful ideas falls within several content areas–organizational communication and organizing most broadly–and more specifically, identity, sensemaking, emotion, wellness, and change/collaboration in high reliability organizations like health centers, airport security checkpoints, and criminal justice systems. While my subject areas are somewhat diverse given my independent research program and professional research roles, practical application and meaningfulness are underlying threads of every project I take on.

As a qualitative methodologist, I lean towards research that emphasizes embodiment, involves researcher immersion, incorporates polyvocality and collaboration with participants, and as the often quoted saying goes, makes the familiar strange.

I often describe myself as a professional people watcher because my favorite way to understand a context is as a participant-observer, someone who hangs out in the scene, observes everything, asks lots of questions and talks to everyone. I also enjoy conducting in-depth interviews, facilitating focus groups and even, yes, combing archival documents.

My analytic toolbox features constant comparison, discourse tracing, metaphor analysis, close reading and autoethnographic self-reflexivity. To complement these qualitatively driven orientations to research, I also participate in mixed-methods research projects, using interviews and document analysis to explain or complicate quantitative findings.

To read some of my published work, check out the “Publications” tab, and for a summary of all things research-related, including awards, grant experience and conference presentations, peruse my CV.