ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the authors’ personal and professional backgrounds. Both women were born in Italy, but one arrived in South Africa as a child with her parents, whereas the other arrived as a young professional. These stories include information on the authors’ positions in the Italian community and how they met in a professional context. This led to the birth of the project and informed the research process, as well as their interest in second- and third-generation Italian immigrants. The chapter also contextualizes their stories theoretically to challenge more traditional research and to highlight the importance of the authors’ personal experiences as part of the research process. They also show how writing up the book as a team drawing on two divergent disciplines led to a collaborative process which could benefit from interdisciplinarity.
