Organizational Psychology Summer Seminar 2023
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck Clore Management Centre
The Department of Organizational Psychology is delighted to host a range of speakers for this year's Summer Seminar which will be taking place on Wednesday 12 July from 12.30pm - 5:30pm. This year's theme will be Existing in Uncertain Times.
This event is open to current and prospective students, alumni, staff, and anyone with an interest in Organizational Psychology. This event is planned to take place in person on Birkbeck Campus.
Organizational Psychology Summer Seminar 2023
Existing in Uncertain Times
Whilst the idea of 'hyper-reality' is not a new one, we can all be forgiven that we have somehow, inaudibly, and invisibly, slipped into an era where the making of the strange as familiar has itself become familiar. The focus of these sessions therefore is less on some concrete 'reality', but one rather founded on change, ambiguity, issues in relation to identity, repetition, and loss.
The aim of this though is not one of negativity. On the contrary, this is one of reflecting upon what we, as a Department of Organizational Psychology do and have a level of responsibility for as educators and researchers, alongside our students and stakeholders. This in helping to create different spaces for thought and action. Spaces in which all of us, as workers, consumers, colleagues, and subjects within our societies, can place hope in change as emancipatory, transparent, and as potentially liberating events. Thus, our speakers offer us a polyphony of voices with which to view and to listen to our interactions with the world, both inside and outside of 'work'.
Therefore, we look forward to seeing, meeting, interacting, and enjoying these contributions together with you in what has been, certainly within Birkbeck's own 200-year-old history, a challenging year. And a fitting lineup with which to demonstrate what Birkbeck does so well and will keep on doing into its third century of existence.
Keywords: Plurality /Interdisciplinarity /celebration /reflection
Keynote Presentation: Birkbeck's intellectual pioneers - Dr Caroline Kamau-Mitchell, Department of Organizational Psychology
This year, Birkbeck celebrates its 200-year anniversary and our summer seminar's Keynote Talk by Dr. Caroline Kamau-Mitchell will celebrate intellectual pioneers from Birkbeck's history. This will be a journey exploring how history, shared identity and collective self-esteem in organisations relate to occupational health. We will remember Birkbeckians such as Rosalind Franklin, who pioneered discoveries about the double-helix structure of DNA; Aaron Klug, Patrick Blackett and Roger Penrose who went on to win Nobel Prizes for work such as extending Einstein's theory of relativity; Kathleen Booth who pioneered the field of computer programming; and Cyril Ponnamperuma who pioneered the study of moon soil in NASA. Other former Birkbeckians include Marcus Garvey, TS Eliot and Tracey Emin, who had a transformative impact on society. Through remembering their history of intellectual pioneers, organisations can connect their sense of shared identity to prototypes from the past and find meaning in future change.
ITINERARY
12:30 Registration
13:00 Welcome address – Mark Stringer, Head of Department, Organizational Psychology
13:20 Keynote Presentation: Birkbeck's intellectual pioneers - Dr Caroline Kamau-Mitchell, Department of Organizational Psychology
14:20 Journey into the unknown - Dr Hayley Lewis, Department of Organizational Psychology
15:00 'Friday is the New Saturday': The economic benefits of a four-day week - Dr Pedro Gomes, Department of Economics, Mathematics and Statistics
15:40 Break (tea & coffee)
16:00 Finding my voice: hitting the highs and lows – Cathy Lee, Department of Organizational Psychology
16:40 I am an endangered species / But I sing no victim's song – Aretha Rutherford, Department of Organizational Psychology. In conversation with Dr Uracha Chatrakul Na Ayudhya, Department of Organizational Psychology
17:20 Closing remarks – Mark Stringer, Head of Department, Organizational Psychology
17:30 End (tea/coffee, soft drinks, nibbles)
The Organizational Psychology Summer Seminar will be followed by the Alec Rodger Memorial Lecture in the evening.
Biographies
Mark Stringer has spent nearly forty years working within organisations in several areas. This has included roles as varied as financial accountancy, Head of Product Management and Marketing, Head of OD, the management of L&D functions and latterly as a Director of both HR and Operations. Along the way, he has won several internal and external facing People related awards, most recently being placed within HR Magazine's 2023 Most Influential Thinkers listing. Within the Department of OP at Birkbeck since 2014 and currently Head of Department, Mark both convenes and teach on several modules, including Organizations and Change Perspectives, HRM Professional Development & Learning and Work and Well Being and continues to supervise numerous MSc Op and HRM Research Projects. Through teaching, supervision and research, his consistent aim, hope, and focus is to promote the use of interdisciplinary and critical tools to provide new readings and thus, in a small way, support those aiming to change organizational issues for the better. His PhD research looked at interpreting Employee Engagement via a Lacanian psychoanalytic lens. Mark has a research project nearing completion on the stories of women's journeys to reach Board level positions and has a chapter looking at differing academic career journeys published via Routledge July 2023. He is also currently undertaking clinical training as a psychoanalyst.
Dr. Caroline Kamau-Mitchell is a Reader in Occupational Health, and she has been working in Birkbeck since 2012. Caroline is one of a small number of academics globally shaping the way that hospitals support the occupational health of medical doctors. Caroline co-authored a randomised-controlled trial of doctors which led to an intervention used by many NHS hospitals. She is passionate about translating research into practice and policy by engaging with the medical community and the United Kingdom's government. She has written reports for the United Kingdom's House of Lords' committees which inspired Parliament to change relevant legislation, and she has influenced inquiries by the House of Lords, and House of Parliament, into occupational health issues. is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, and a member of Birkbeck's Centre for Medical Humanities. She leads Birkbeck's Brainstorming Grants Group, a learning programme for academics which she organises and delivers, featuring speakers who are global pioneers (e.g., winners of the Nobel Prize and fellows of the Royal Society).
Dr Hayley Lewis, is an award-winning psychologist with more than 25 years experience in the field of occupational and organisational psychology. For the past seven years, she has run her own successful consultancy - HALO Psychology - and before this, she worked at the BBC as an in-house psychologist, and in local government in various senior leadership roles. Since 2022, Hayley has been been joint programme director of Part 1 of the Professional Doctorate in Occupational Psychology, supporting the next generation of occ psychs in developing excellence in practice. Hayley is well-known for her social media presence and sharing useful content, particularly on LinkedIn and you can connect with her there.
Dr Pedro Gomes, Associate Professor in Economics at Birkbeck, University of London and author of the book Friday is the New Saturday. Previously, he spent seven years as Assistant Professor at the University Carlos III de Madrid, was a Visiting Professor at the University of Essex and held positions at the European Central Bank and the Bank of England.Pedro studied for his BSc in Economics in his hometown of Lisbon, and received his PhD from the London School of Economics in 2010. A leading researcher on public sector employment, he has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and chapters in books. He values partnerships with policy institutions, and often presents his work at the European Central Bank, World Bank, IMF, European Commission, and the OECD.
Cathy Lee works full-time as Head of Internal Communications for a legal regulator in Birmingham. She returned to studying in October 2020, more than 30 years after completing her last (undergraduate) degree, starting Birkbeck's distance learning part-time MSc course in Organizational Psychology.
Cathy started her career as a newspaper journalist, before working in various public sector roles in media relations and communications. She won the Department prize for Best Research Project Mark in the 2022 graduating class.
Aretha Rutherford, is a recent MSc graduate in Career Management and Coaching who excelled in her seminal research on the impact of media images on Black female creatives' career paths in the UK. She also holds an MA in Design and Branding Strategy. Committed to dismantling systemic barriers, Aretha supports neurodivergent employees as a coach and manages an accelerator fund for Black entrepreneurs.
Dr Uracha Chatrakul Na Ayudhya, is a proud migrant worker. She is the Assistant Dean for Equalities and Diversity at the School of Business, Economics, and Informatics (BEI) and Senior Lecturer and Programme Director of MSc Human Resource Management in the Department of Organizational Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London, UK. Uracha researches and writes about unequal working lives and careers. Her work focuses on workers’ lived experience at the intersection of gender, race, ethnicity, immigration status, and nationality. Her research is informed by critical approaches to ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’. Her latest research focuses on the practice and methodologies of ‘writing differently’ and collective writing as resistance against hegemonic norms of knowledge production.
Contact name:
BEI Events and Communications