Dr Robin Burrow

Profile

Robin completed his PhD at the University of Warwick, where he also gained an MSc in Organization Studies. His thesis examined the practiced realities of (medical) work, and was partly completed during a visiting scholarship at the Department of Sociology at the University of California (Los Angeles).

Robin has taught organization studies extensively on a range of different academic programmes. He has also researched and published widely on the lived realities of extreme forms of work, developing specific expertise in relation to the connection between emotions and behaviour. Robin’s work has been covered extensively in the print media, on radio and television.

Outside of the University, Robin holds/has held visiting research positions at the University of Warwick, King’s College London, University of Technology (Sydney) and Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand). He has held visiting teaching positions at University of Birmingham and Audencia School of Management (France). He also consults widely for a range of large, high-profile public, private and charitable organizations in the UK and abroad.

Research interests

Robin’s research is concerned with the lived realities of work in extreme(ly challenging) organizational contexts. His work in this area has four main elements:

(1) The relationship between emotions (e.g. fear, guilt, shame, anxiety, pride, euphoria and enrapture) and organizational behaviour, particularly in highly pressurised, safety critical environments.

(2) The emergence, transmission and management of ‘emotional climates’ – e.g. shared tensions and climates of fear – and their impact on human performance.

(3) The lived realities of morally complex forms of labour at the extreme peripheries of society.

(4) The spread and entrenchment of nonreality-based beliefs in organizations and society.