Dr Elaine Keane will join Professor Vivian Martin in discussing “The Future of Grounded Theory” in response to Professor Barry Gibson’s analysis of the history of grounded theory.
Elaine is Associate Professor and Director of Doctoral Studies in the School of Education at the University of Galway, Ireland. Her research focuses on social class and education, teacher diversity, and constructivist grounded theory (CGT) and she has published widely and has led national and international projects in these areas.
Elaine was lead editor of the Routledge (2023) book about diversifying the teaching profession. She is Co-Editor of Irish Educational Studies, serves on the Editorial Board of Teaching in Higher Education, is Inaugural Chair of the National Initial Teacher Education Diversity Network and Convenor of the Educational Studies Association of Ireland (ESAI) Special Interest Group on Teacher Diversity Research.
Elaine has collaborated and published with CGT originator, Kathy Charmaz, and has taught expert workshops on CGT throughout Ireland and in Australia, South Africa, Sweden, the U.K., and the U.S.A., including at the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Research Talk Inc., and international webinars via NVivo/Lumivero.
Elaine has also authored and co-authored chapters on CGT in several methodology books, including the Routledge Encyclopaedia of Qualitative Research Methods (forthcoming), APA Handbook of Research Methods in Psychology (2023), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research Design (2022), and The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (5th ed., 2018). She is also lead editor (co-editor, Robert Thornberg) of the Routledge International Handbook of Constructivist Grounded Theory in Educational Research (Routledge, 2025).