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Abstract

Many, if not most, of my writing comes from experience, as it does for many scholars-either observing situations and events, being among those involved in these, and the many discussions with students and colleagues about the experiences they have gone through in many countries I have visited or worked in. This topic of mentoring and the related role of role modelling initially came to me shortly after doing my doctorate in a mentoring mode with Christopher Hodgkinson in Canada, and my ideas about this were reinforced when I was mentored in informal postdoctoral work with Wolfgang Mommsen in Germany in the 1990s. Since that time, I have mentored some of my doctoral students, particularly in the last few years working with several in the Arabian Gulf. It was time for me to revisit my research and understanding of this topic after going through several years of research trips, guest lecturing and collaborative projects in Western, Central and Eastern Europe, followed by several years in the Gulf learning about the embeddedness of such roles in