More Meaningful Journeys Further Autoethnographies of Quest and Identity Transformation

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Lloyd-Parkes is an independent scholar, currently supervising doctoral students at the University of Gloucestershire. A marketer and a communicator with a background in languages, Lizzie's academic interests lie in business-related storytelling, autoethnography and other highly qualitative methodologies. Her own research focuses on consumer psychology and behaviour, specifically as it relates to the tourism and hospitality sector. Lizzie has previously worked in sectors and organisations such as Sony Manufacturing, BP Chemicals, the Diplomatic Service and the IT sector, and has served as a Director to a cancer support charity. A proud Cymraes (Welsh woman), in her personal life, Lizzie enjoys travel, baking, growing her own produce and keeping bees.

Alec Grant, PhD has, over decades, contributed many published peer reviewed autoethnographic articles, book chapters, edited volumes, and co- and single authored books, and in 2020 was awarded the Inaugural Lifetime Contribution Award by the International Conference of Autoethnography. Before reverting to independent scholar status, he was Visiting Professor in autoethnography at the University of Bolton, and, prior to his retirement from full-time institutional academic life, was Reader in Narrative Mental Health at the University of Brighton. He holds a research PhD in critical ethnography and a PhD in Published Work (Retrospective). The latter pulled together his autoethnographic writing in a critical commentary which argued the importance of resisting cultural narrative entrapment in autoethnography; an extended version of this work was published as a Routledge text (Grant, 2025). His Masters degrees in Psychotherapy and Philosophy have directly informed his autoethnographic work. A recently completed MA in (Early Modern) History got him interested in the Protestant reformation and, by extension and implication, Catholicism. This led to his interests shifting wholesale from autoethnography in the direction of his current postgraduate studies in Theology with Domuni Universitas.