My research challenges us to explore new ways of being - it explores what is at stake when we make choices about how we want to live, and asks how far people will go to challenge (or defend) any given reality. Initially, my interest in this area came from a fascination with minority language communities: their histories, and their aspirations for the future. Why is it, for example, that people in Catalonia would go to extraordinary lengths to separate from Spain, while others, in other parts of Spain are equally committed to preserving the state as it is? This then developed in the direction of other groups and other realities; realities that are often at odds with the 'majority' around them: Amish communities and others who reject or readily embrace technologies... First Nation and Aboriginal communities, Roma and traveller groups... those committed to non-violence... utopian and intentional communities. For 20 years, my work focused on the signing deaf community, and how their self-construction as a cultural and linguistic minority is at odds with their construction by wider society as those who are 'disabled'. In all of these cases, I'm interested in the reality of each group... and in how to translate those realities, so that both minority and majority can understand each other, and themselves, and so engage in making choices and building a reality that is not merely accidental, but purposeful. ---Since moving on from academic work, I've scratched the same itch by exploring how academic organisations work, and by investigating the experiences of those who work within them. Working as a consultant in the HE sector, I've been able to investigate the views of international students, researchers, and others... exploring how their realities look from their own vantage point, and from the point of view of the universities they work for, and the wider sector. Most recently, I've been supporting academics to write. Not only as a normal part of their academic work - to explain why and how they see the world... but to approach how they *do* writing itself as a way to express how they want to *be* as academics, and as people.