Pat Sikes is a professor of qualitative inquiry in the School of Education, University of Sheffield. She became interested in narrative auto/biographical approaches in the late 1970s and throughout her career has undertaken research which has used them to investigate topics around teachers’ lives and careers and, from 2014, the perceptions and experiences of children and young people who have a parent with a young onset dementia. Research ethics are another key concern and focus of Pat’s work. In 2018, the British Educational Research Association awarded her the John Nisbet Fellowship for an outstanding contribution to educational research over a career.