Margaret Gearty

Margaret is an action researcher and lifelong learner who sometimes describes herself as peripatetic scholar practitioner. Originally from Ireland she’s based near Bath in the UK where she enjoys exploring the local woods and swimming in nearby rivers when feeling brave.

Margaret’s specially interested in exploring how storytelling and action research might be creatively combined to develop meaningful personal and systemic responses to social and environmental issues, not least the climate crisis. One area of focus for Margaret over the years has been the approach of ‘learning histories’ as a means of surfacing stories of practice and spreading learning about ways to creatively organise and adapt within complex challenges. She has published and spoken widely on this. More recently Margaret joined Judi Marshall in writing about ‘living life as inquiry’ – as an embodied practice for change agents.

Via her research practice New Histories (established in 2012), Margaret has been lucky to be able to pursue her research interests with others through a diversity of projects relating to environmental sustainability. She has collaborated with teams and individuals from across public and private sectors to adopt inquiry-based approaches to learning that are often rooted in their day-to-day and life stories. Meanwhile Margaret’s a professor and active member of the teaching community at Ashridge /Hult business school. Since 2011 she has tutored on the PhD in organisational change there, and until 2018, on the MSc in Sustainability and Responsibility. In summary her practice of living and learning grapples with questions of change that span from the personal and local to the systemic and political.

Education

• PhD University of Bath (2006 — 2009)
• Msc University of Bath
• Msc University of Dublin (Trinity College) (1987 — 1988)
• B.A, B.A.I University of Dublin (Trinity College) (1983 — 1987)