I have been blogging now for quite a bit, and so to get a bit of a refresher, I have joined WordPress’s Blogging 101 tutorial group. The first exercise was to introduce yourself and/or to refresh your ‘About’ page. Just in case you are interested, here is my revised page.
My name is Ann Rippin. I am a reader at the University of Bristol in the Department of Management.
My research is centred on the role of cloth in society. This covers everything from how we organise to produce cloth to why we keep certain items of clothing, to how we form our identities through what we wear, to the importance of what I call Hestia crafts in women’s lives. Hestia crafts are to do with creating a home, after the Greek goddess of home and hearth, Hestia. There is very little to do with fabric that does not interest me. And so, to me, it is perfectly natural that as part of my research, I create quilted and embroidered textiles about the companies I research or some of the themes that I am interested in such as organisational excess, or foundation narratives. I have set up my blog for people who are interested in my work and want to follow my new pieces as they emerge.
My big project at the moment is about Laura Ashley. This is partly for me to explore narrative approaches to work, but also for me to do a bit of homage to the woman who got so many quilters in this country started. I am wrestling with whether I should include a photo of my first quilt, which is old and disgraceful, but which was made with some Laura Ashley fabric, which I bought in the 1980s in Cardiff, as well as some Liberty fabric. Quilters will recognise this pattern!
I have also just taken over as the co-editor of Culture and Organization, which is a scholarly journal for people who study management. Prior to that I was Chair of SCOS, the Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism (www.scos.org) which is a scholarly organisation of about 1000 members from all over the world, although mainly Northern Europe, dedicated to exploring the more interesting, unusual and provocative elements of business and management research.
