Sharlene Janice Nagy Hesse-Biber is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Women’s Studies & Gender Studies Program at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. She has published widely on the impact of sociocultural factors on women’s body image, including her book Am I Thin Enough Yet? The Cult of Thinness and the Commercialization of Identity (Oxford, 1996), which was selected as one of Choice magazine’s best academic books in 1996. She also published The Cult of Thinness (Oxford, 2007).

She has also written widely on methodological and methods issues, including the role of technology and emergent methods in social research. She is co-editor of Emergent Methods in Social Research (Sage, 2006). She is co-author of The Practice of Qualitative Research (Sage, 2006; second edition, 2010; third edition, 2014). She is editor of the Handbook of Feminist Research: Theory and Praxis (Sage, 2007; 2012), which was selected as one of the Critics’ Choice Award winners by the American Education Studies Association and was also chosen as one of Choice Magazine’s Outstanding Academic titles for 2007. She is co-editor of the Handbook of Emergent Methods (Guilford, 2008). She is a contributor to the Handbook of Grounded Theory (Sage, 2008) as well to the Handbook of Mixed Methods Research (Sage second edition, 2010). She is author of Mixed Methods Research: Merging Theory with Practice (Guilford, 2010). She edited the The Practice of Feminist Research (Sage, 2014).