I welcome prospective PhD applications in the following areas: Leadership and Leader-follower relations; Emotions and subjectivity at workplace; Topics in organizational studies approached from a Psychoanalytic perspective; Topics approached through a narrative or storytelling methodology; Identity & gender studies; Topics exploring cultural, non-western and international perspectives;
Drawing from a social, critical and a psychoanalytical approach, my research interests mainly explores the following research areas broadly:
- Emotions & affect in organizations: Various nuances of emotions (their ambiguities, dynamics, mysteries and manifestations). In particular, complex, taboo and hidden emotions (eg: envy, fear, shame, guilt, anxiety); Organizations as emotion spaces: how emotions influence affairs at work and how events at work influence our emotions; Interplay between emotions, individual subjectivities and organizational life (eg: narcissism, fear, fantasy).
- Leadership & Identity: Drawing from a critical approach, I am particularly interested in exploring the dark side of leadership, Leader dysfunctions & Leader-follower relations (with a focus on gender, culture & non-western perspectives); Leadership and emotions; Self and psychodynamic perspectives on leadership and identity;
- Psychoanalytic study of organisations: exploring organizational phenomena using concepts such as unconscious & defense mechanisms; applying psychodynamic approaches to group work and organizational consulting; exploring organizational darkness (eg: derision, miasma, toxicity, sabotage).
- Qualitative methodologies: Storytelling and narrative techniques; free association method; semiotics and symbolism
Project Title: "Exploring the role of discreet emotions in the workplace" (£4,100)
I am currently supervising two PhD students:
- Diansha Wang: (Project title) Leaders or followers? Deconstructing Leadershpi Duality in a Social Networking Context.
- Fraser Tidman: (Project title) HRM: And identity crisis? The changing shape of traditional human resource management and the emergence of the People Function
BA (Hons.), MSc (LSE), PhD (Bath), Post-Doc (Lund), PGCAP (Lancs), FHEA