| Abstract: | ABSTRACT This article reports the initial findings of a study of the cohort of students who entered Liverpool John Moores University, England, to study women's studies in the autumn of 1994, basing its focus on the survey carried out as soon as the students entered the University and the in-depth interviews carried out later in that semester. The work proceeded within the tradition of grounded theory research and endeavoured to avoid prepared hypotheses in order to allow the themes to emerge from the students' answers. From the initial findings, the very strong emphasis on the salience of the students' choice of women's studies and the experiential importance of identity as a concept was striking. The article debates the theoretical difficulties in the theorising of identity in relation to the empirical, existential project of the students. |
