ABSTRACT
The cocktail of concerns that swirls around the head of any doctoral candidate about to enter the final examination had been spiked by a comment my then employer, Professor Mick Ryan, made after I told him the names of my examiners. He had not heard of Simon Frith, the external examiner, but the name ‘Geoff Pearson’ produced a visible reaction. Like a dodgy builder calculating just how high he can pitch the estimate without losing the job, he paused as if searching for the best way to deliver the bad news. Eventually he arrived at a well-weighted estimate, ‘Ah, Geoff’… he can be rather contrary’. The failure to elaborate on what form of contrarian this implied made the prospect of facing an unknown quantity for the external and a ‘disagreeable’ internal more daunting. After reflecting on the contrarian in Pearson’s work, the going against the flow of condemnation, asking awkward questions, looking to qualify assumptions, exposing mythologies and adding historical perspective, I could see room for optimism in the qualities I admired.
