Professor Crotty is the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Global Engagement at the University of Sunderland, UK. She has nearly 30 years of experience in employing qualitative techniques to study social phenomena – predominantly in the former Soviet Union, but also extending to the UK and Eastern Europe. She has authored over 100 scholarly articles, conference papers, and book chapters and has secured several grants from the British Academy and the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). She currently also serves on the review board of Voluntary Sector Review and is a member of the ESRC review college.

In the latter part of her career, Crotty’s mission is to contribute to pluralising the academic landscape by enabling researchers from diverse backgrounds and nationalities to research social phenomena across different contexts, broadening our collective knowledge and shaping conceptual frameworks accordingly.