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2027 Qualitative Book Award

Call for Nominations

This award is conferred annually to a member of the qualitative and ethnographic community who has published the English-language book that best represents an important contribution to qualitative inquiry. Eligible books should not be edited books or anthologies. They should be single or co-authored. They will use and advance qualitative methods to investigate any topic or aspect of qualitative inquiry and may involve research reports, interpretations, and analyses. Please note that material intended to serve as textbooks rarely meets the criteria outlined here.

Applications for the award will be judged by criteria that signify a major contribution to the study and practice of qualitative approaches. Such criteria may include success in experimenting with new or traditional writing forms, inclusion of critical reflections on the writing and research process, contributions to living meaningful lives, and insights into creating a socially just world. The award will be presented at the annual meeting of the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry in May 2027.

To be eligible for the 2027 award, and in light of the two-year conference hiatus, the book must be published between 1st January 2024 and 31st December 2026. A book already reviewed for the 2025 award is not eligible for resubmission in 2027. Nominators are expected to arrange for copies of the book to be mailed to and received by each member of the three-judge panel (see addresses below).

A letter of nomination for the book should be sent via email or hard copy, no later than 16 November 2026, to Jonathan Wyatt, chair of the committee, at jonathan.wyatt@ed.ac.uk

Nominators must arrange for hard copies of the book to be mailed to and received by each member of the panel by 1 December 2026.

Outstanding Qualitative Book Award Winners (English)
  • 2010
    Carolyn Ellis. (2009) Revision: Autoethnographic Reflections on Life and Work. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
    Honorable Mention:
    Mary L. Gray. (2009) Out in the country: Youth, media, and queer visibility in rural America. New York: New York University Press.
    Pat Sikes and Heather Piper. (2010) Researching sex and lies in the classroom: Allegations of sexual misconduct in schools. New York and London: Routledge.
  • 2011
    Co-Winners:
    Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston (2010) Staging strife: Lessons from performing ethnography with Polish Roma women. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
    Marilyn Metta, (2010) Writing against, alongside and beyond memory: Lifewriting as reflexive, poststructuralist feminist research practice. New York: Peter Lang.
    Honorable Mention:
    Viv Martin, (2010) Developing a narrative approach to healthcare research. Oxford, UK: Radcliffe.
  • 2012
    Celine-Marie Pascale. (2011) Cartographies of Knowledge: Exploring Qualitative Methodologies. Sage Publications.
    Honorable Mention:
    Andrea Dyrness. (2011) Mothers United: An Immigrant Struggle for Socially Just Education. University of Minnesota Press.
  • 2013
    Donna West. (2012) Signs of hope: Deafhearing family life. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
    Honorable Mention:
    Mary M. Gergen, and Kenneth J. Gergen. (2012) Playing with purpose: Adventures in performative social science. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
    Martin Packer. (2011) The Science of qualitative research. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
  • 2014
    Robin Boylorn. (2013) Sweetwater: Black Women and Narratives of Resistance. New York, Peter Lang.
    Honorable mention:
    Laurel Richardson. (2013) After a Fall: A Sociomedical Sojurn. Walnut Creek, Left Coast Press.
    Ricardo Castro-Salazar & Carl Bagley. (2012) Navigating Borders: Critical Race Theory Research and Counter History of Undocumented Americans. New York: Peter Lang.
  • 2015
    Arthur Bochner. (2014) Coming to Narrative: A Personal History of Paradigm Change in the Human Sciences. Walnut Creek, Left Coast Press.
    Honorable Mention:
    Kristine Munoz. (2014) Transcribing Silence: Culture, Relationships, and Communications. Walnut Creek, Left Coast Press.
    Devika Chawla. (2014) Home, Uprooted: Oral Histories of India’s Partition. New York, Fordham University Press.
    Bronwyn Davies. (2014) Listening to Children: Being and Becoming. London, Routledge.
  • 2016
    Alisse Waterston. (2014) My Father’s Wars: Migration, Memory, and the Violence of a Century. NY: Routledge.
    Jane Speedy. (2015). Staring at the Park: A Poetic Autoethnographic Inquiry. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
  • 2017
    K. Bhattacharya, & N. K. Gillen (2016). Power, Race, and Higher Education A Cross-Cultural Parallel Narrative. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
    Honorable Mention:
    Tami Spry (2016). Autoethnography and the Other: Unsettling Power Through Utopian Performatives. New York: Routledge.
  • 2018
    Anderson, P. (2017). Autobiography of a disease. New York & London: Routledge.
    Honorable mention:
    de Rond, M. (2017). Doctors at war: Life and death in a field hospital. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
    Ellingson, L. L. (2017). Embodiment in qualitative research. New York & London: Routledge.
  • 2019
    Co-Winners:
    Denzin, N. (2018). Performance autoethnography: Critical pedagogy and the politics of culture. (2nd ed.). London & New York. Routledge.
    Ellis, Carolyn. (2018). Final Negotiations: A Story of Love, Loss, and Chronic Illness. (Revised & expanded ed.). Philadelphia, Rome & Tokyo: Temple University Press.
    Honorable mention:
    Bhatia, S. (2018). Decolonizing psychology: Globalization, social justice, and Indian youth identities. New York: Oxford University Press.
    Gullion, J. S. (2018). Diffractive ethnography: Social sciences and the ontological turn. New York & London: Routledge.
  • 2020
    Winner:
    Wyatt, J. (2019). Therapy, stand-up, and the gesture of writing. New York & London: Routledge.
    Honorable mention:
    Holman Jones, S., & Harris, A. M. (2019). Queering autoethnography. New York & London: Routledge.
    Kuntz, A. M. (2019). Qualitative inquiry, cartography, and the promise of material change. London & New York: Routledge.
    Richardson, L. (2019). Lone twin: A true story of loss and found. Leiden & Boston: Brill Sense.
  • 2021
    Winner:
    Edwards, E. B., & Esposito, J. (2020). Intersectional analysis as a method to analyze popular culture: Clarity in the matrix. Routledge.
    Honorable mention:
    Faulkner, S. L. (2020). Poetic inquiry: Craft, method and practice (2nd ed.). Routledge.
  • 2022
    Winner:
    Lengelle, R. (2020). Writing the Self in Bereavement: A Story of Love, Spousal Loss, and Resilience. London & New York: Routledge.
    Honorable Mentions:
    Davies, B. (2020). Entanglement in the World’s Becoming and the Doing of New Materialist Inquiry. London & New York: Routledge.
    Rhee, J. (2020). Decolonial Feminist Research: Haunting, Rememory and Mothers. London & New York: Routledge.
  • 2023
    Winners:
    Marisa de Andrade, Public Health, Humanities and Magical Realism: A Creative-Relational Approach to Researching Human Experience, Routledge
    Stephanie R. Toliver, Recovering Black Storytelling in Qualitative Research, Routledge
    Honorable Mention:
    Thalia Mulvihill and Raji Swaminathan, Collaborative Qualitative Research, Guilford Press
  • 2024
    Winner:
    M.F. Alvarez, Unravelling: An Autoethnography of Suicide and Renewal. Routledge.
    Honorable Mention:
    Trish Thompson and Dan Harris, Collaborative Writing and Psychotherapy: Flattening the Hierarchy Between Therapist and Client, Routledge.
  • 2025
    Joint winners:
    Wiremu NiaNia, Allister Bush, David Epston, Ngā Kūaha: Voices and Visions in Māori Healing and Psychiatry, Routledge, 2025.
    Alexandre Baril, Undoing Suicidism: A Trans, Queer, Crip Approach to Rethinking (Assisted) Suicide, Temple University Press, 2023.
Outstanding Qualitative Book Award Winners (Spanish or Portugese)
  • 2012
    Fernando Peñaranda Correa et al.(2011). Educación para la salud: una mirada alternativa al modelo biomédico. La praxis como fundamento de una educación dialógica. Medellín, Colombia: La Carreta Editores.
  • 2014
    Maria do Mar Pereira. ‘FazendoGénero no Recreio. A negociaçao do géneroemespaço escolar (Making Gender at playtime. Negotiating gender in school space.) Lisboa: Imprensa de CiênciasSociais, 2012.
  • 2016
    João Amado. (2014). Manual de Investigação Qualitativa em Educação (Handbook of Qualitative Inquiry in Education). Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra / Coimbra University Press
  • 2018
    Ana Caetano. Pensar na vida. Biografias e reflexividade individual. Lisboa, Portugal: Editora Mundos Sociais – Centro de Investigação e Estudos de Sociologia. Instituto Universitario de Lisboa. First edition, 2016.
Award Committee Members
  • Jonathan Wyatt
    Centre for Creative-Relational Inquiry
    School of Health in Social Science
    University of Edinburgh
    Medical School
    Teviot Place
    Edinburgh UK
    EH8 9AG
    Email: jonathan.wyatt@ed.ac.uk
  • Kakali Bhattacharya
    7674 SW 88th Street
    Gainesville, FL 32608
    USA
  • Tony Adams
    3111 N Sheridan Rd.
    Peoria, Illinois, 61604