The Game of Thrones Small Council and Doctoral Training in Qualitative Inquiry

This article moves toward the continued creation of spaces and places to share, discuss, argue, challenge, and celebrate the profound number of theories and methodologies within qualitative inquiry. To do so, I take up some nuances and tensions in the television series, Game of Thrones, and work/think/play with them in relation to Deleuze and Guattari’s packs and masses configurations. I use this theorizing to briefly discuss doctoral training in qualitative inquiry and in particular how the experience of pack AND mass leadership have the potential to be lived out in ways that allow those with less power to work/think/play a bit. The aim is to take seriously how those seated at the table have a profound influence on what is stated and not stated; the direction a dissertation takes; what becomes thinkable and what remains unthinkable; and whether work/think/play can be realized.