By: Dr Di Wang, Lecturer of Accounting at Lancaster University Management School; & Professor Yves Gendron, Professor of Accounting at Laval University, Canada.

Our Qualitative Day Workshop series goes from strength to strength. Following a successful ‘first edition’ held in December 2019, a ‘second edition’ was organised for March 2021. This time the conditions enforced by the coronavirus pandemic were both a blessing as well as a burden, as the virtual format enabled around 100 participants from 17 countries (Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, UK and USA). Participants included both early career researchers as well as accounting professors.

The second edition featured three eminent accounting scholars – Professor Kari Lukka, Professor Brendan O’Dwyer, and Professor Chris Chapman as keynote speakers. Both Brendan O’Dwyer and Chris Chapman have expertise in sustainability accounting, and so sustainability accounting was a key feature of the day, and Brendan used examples of sustainability accounting including TCFD to illustrate qualitative data analysis.

In creating the Workshop, one of our aims was to allow doctoral students and younger faculty members, interested in and committed to qualitative research, to meet together in an environment where openness to qualitative epistemologies prevails.

Completing doctoral studies is mostly a solitary experience, and the Workshop was meant to provide a sense of – even a demonstration that a vibrant community surrounds qualitative accounting research in the UK (and elsewhere).

The Workshop was also meant to be an inter-generational initiative, where several experienced qualitative researchers genuinely seek to provide guidance, views, and advice on important features and diversity surrounding qualitative research methods – while interacting with the audience.

As mentioned during the concluding comments of the second workshop, one of the hoped-for contributions is to arouse qualitative researchers’ feeling of pride regarding their fundamental roles within knowledge production processes and universities.

The organisation of Workshop Edition 3 is underway, and details will be announced in the not-too-distant future.