Beyond the return-to-work narrative. Seminar with James Walker

Fiona Martin is a Socioanalytic consultant, executive coach, researcher, and writer. She recently led the development of multi-agency initiatives in the emergency service sector in Australia to support the development of leadership capability and provided research services to the environment and emergency services sectors. Fiona has held leadership roles that have been responsible for innovation and change in private enterprise, government, emergency management, and the education sector.  She holds a Masters in leadership and Management (Organizational Dynamics) from the National Institute of Organisation Dynamics Australia (NIODA) and is an accredited Analytic Network Coach. Fiona is a member of the Editorial Board of Socioanalysis, Convenor of the International Harold Bridger Award for authors, a Director of Group Relations Australia, a Board member of the International Society of Psychoanalytic Study of Organisations (ISPSO) and a member of the Organisation for Promoting Understanding of Society (OPUS). She has authored and co-authored academic papers and book chapters.

Julian Manley is a Professor of Social Innovation at the University of Central Lancashire, UK and a Senior Associate Researcher at the University of Johannesburg. He is widely published and an experienced host of social dreaming matrices. His work includes a range of perspectives on the development of social dreaming in different contexts such as the visual arts, issues of race and climate change. He helped to develop the visual matrix method that emerged from his work in social dreaming. He is a founding Director of the Centre for Social Dreaming and a Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council.

Dr Brigid Nossal is a co-founder of the National Institute of Organisation Dynamics Australia (NIODA). She combines, academic teaching, research and consulting in applied systems psychodynamics. Brigid is also a passionate practitioner in Group Relations and has worked on staff of many conferences in Australia, UK, India and China. Most recently, Brigid Directed NIODA’s 2023 GRC. Brigid has been involved with the journal Socioanalysis since 2004, taking up roles as assistant editor, associate editor and member of the Editorial Board. Brigid has been a regular presenter at international symposia such as the Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organisations and a number of these papers have subsequently been published in Socioanalysis and Organisational and Social Dynamics. Her paper, ‘Collaborating and Consulting: An Impossible Task?’ was published in Volume 25 of the journal.

Kristina Karlsson MLM (Org Dyn) LLB BA(Hons) GCPS is Socioanalysis’ Book Review Editor. She is a graduate of, and current PhD candidate at, the National Institute of Organisation Dynamics Australia, where she is also on the academic teaching staff. Kristina has published articles and book reviews in Socioanalysis, presented at international conferences and, in 2019, won the Bridger Award for the most original and creative paper at the Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organisations.

Neo Pule is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), and a registered Counselling Psychologist with 15 years of practice experience. Her role at UJ and other South African universities where she has worked, involves the training of professional counselling psychologists. She is currently the Programme Manager of the MA Counselling Psychology program at UJ. Dr Pule holds a doctoral degree in Consulting Psychology, which focuses on working and understanding the system psychodynamics of individuals, groups and organizations. Specifically, she focused her doctoral thesis on exploring the social construction of student leadership in a South African university using social dream drawing. Her work on social dreaming continued as she explored further projects with student leaders in South Africa, one of which was funded by the National Research Foundation (South Africa), through the Black Academic Advancement Program. Additionally, the same project attracted the Newton Fund Researcher Links Travel Grants, British Council. This grant facilitated the strengthening of her collaborative work with social dreaming-focused researchers in the UK, at the University of the West of England and the University of Central Lancashire. Currently, Dr Pule is a visiting research fellow at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. She is pursuing a UK-SA program with Prof Julian Manley on the decolonization of Higher Education through social dreaming. Dr Pule is a current director of the Centre for Social Dreaming. Her publication record spans various South African and international journals focusing on her social dreaming research, supervising MA and PhD programs and acting as an article reviewer for various journals focusing on psychology, student development and related fields. Furthermore, she is a current special issue guest editor for the Journal of Student Affairs in Africa.

Tanya Lewis has a doctorate in education from the University of Toronto in Canada.  She has been a sessional instructor at Brock and Toronto Metropolitan University in Sociology and has an ongoing interest in pedagogy. She has published one book and several referred articles. Tanya Lewis has held senior leadership positions for eighteen years at the Toronto Metropolitan University as well as the University of Toronto. She is a consultant and a leadership coach within the post-secondary and non-profit sector working from systems psychodynamic perspectives. She is a certified consultant with the A.K. Rice Institute and the coordinator of Insight for Community Impact ici-ici.ca.