Alec Rodger Memorial Lecture 2023
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck Clore Management Centre
Since 1983, the annual Alec Rodger Memorial Lecture honours the influence of one of the founding members of the Department of Organizational Psychology. The invited speakers are distinguished individuals who have made a demonstrable impact on organisations in academia, public service and commerce.
The lecture series is funded by the T. Ritchie Rodger Research Fund, which is managed by the British Psychological Society (BPS). The fund was set up by Alec Rodger, the first Professor of Occupational Psychology at Birkbeck, in memory of his father.
2023: Professor Stephen Frosh, Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London: Dreaming of War
We are delighted to welcome Professor Stephen Frosh, Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London as our Memorial speaker who will deliver a talk entitled 'Dreaming of War'. In this talk Professor Frosh will explore dreams and war diaries collected from Ukrainian students in the first two months of the war and how these can be thought about as inhabiting a dreamscape of fear and desire. The expressiveness of these pieces of writing is very striking: how prescient they are, how they convey the turmoil, threat and reality of war, how much they evoke the emotional ‘harmonics’ of the situation. They overlap greatly in tone and content, even though the diaries are by their nature more geared to actual events. It makes some sense to treat the diaries as extended dreams, and the dreams as miniature diaries.
In this talk, Professor Frosh will draw on psychoanalytic ideas developed in previous European conflicts to engage with some of these dreams and diaries to examine the work they do in creating narratives of anger, anxiety, resilience, justice and repair.
The Alec Rodger Memorial is open to students, alumni, staff, and friends of the Department of Organizational Psychology. The Lecture is planned to take place in person on Birkbeck Campus.
LECTURE ITINERARY
18:00 Welcome address – Professor Geoff Walters, Executive Dean, School of BEI, Birkbeck, University of London
18:10 Introduction – Mark Stringer, Head of Department, Organizational Psychology, Birkbeck, University of London
18:15 Alec Rodger Memorial lecture – Professor Stephen Frosh, Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London
19:00 Audience Q&A Chaired by Mark Stringer, Head of Department, Organizational Psychology, Birkbeck, University of London
19:20 Closing remarks and vote of thanks - Mark Stringer, Head of Department, Organizational Psychology, Birkbeck, University of London
19:30 Drinks Reception in the Clore Foyer
BIOGRAPHY
Stephen Frosh has worked at Birkbeck from 1979, first in the School of Psychology and since 2008 in the Department of Psychosocial Studies, of which he was a founding member and first Head of Department. From 1982 until 2000 he worked part time at Birkbeck and part time as a clinical psychologist in the NHS. Throughout the 1990s he was Consultant Clinical Psychologist and (from 1996) Vice Dean in the Child and Family Department of the Tavistock Clinic, London. His academic interests are in the applications of psychoanalysis to social issues; gender, culture and ‘race’; and psychosocial studies. He was Pro-Vice-Master of Birkbeck from 2003 to 2017, first with responsibility for Learning and Teaching, then for Research and then for Internationalisation.
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