Virginia Cotterell Kenny is the young scientist who wanted to grow up and design jet planes but later needed to understand why words are so rich in meaning. As the university psychology syllabus seemed preoccupied with rats rather than words, I studied English Literature and, being multidisciplinary by nature, ended up as a cultural historian.
My most inspiring science teacher from school rescued me just before I could get seriously caught up in university teaching. He took me on as his assistant in a long-term educational research organization; and so began an exciting few decades in policy development, management and governance. This included stints managing an enquiry into post-secondary education, being principal of a university college, vice-president of an institute of technology and deputy-chancellor of a university.
People and committees bring me great pleasure but, being a thinker and writer by nature, I find that nearly everything turns into research. This is often prompted by others’ questions, as my explanations seem to help some people make sense of things. And, having put up an argument, I have to work out whether my answer was well-grounded or not!
In process of answering one of these requests, I made a connection that turned into the project that has occupied me for most of the past decade. Suddenly I realized that the pattern of imagery that had prompted my post-graduate research was recurring in a distorted form in modern organizations under stress. Some aspects of my research in testing this hypothesis can be checked out on this site.
The photograph of me is really of the partly-concealed cat searching for fieldmice as I stride down the first fairway with a golf club for our grandson. He is learning to putt on the par-3, 9-hole golf course my husband created around the cottage, built for his grandparents a century ago www.martinsfield.kennymoy.com.au. We have hosted many social, collegial and charity tournaments there over the years.