Role
Dr Ishan Jalan is the Director of Doctoral Programmes and Chair of School Research Degrees Committee at Nottingham Business School. He is responsible for the leadership, strategic development and operational management of the portfolio of research degrees within the business school. This includes responsibility of the doctoral programmes, chairing progression boards, student recruitment, marketing & international partnerships, funding and bursary, research environment, student welfare, supervision training, curriculum design and delivery of the research training workshop. Ishan's other senior leadership roles include NBS representative at University Research Degrees Committee, member of School Research and Innovation Committee and member of NTU Doctoral Directors Forum.
Ishan's other roles include Module Leader for different courses on the MBA, Exec-MBA and Corporate Programmes where he teaches organisational behaviour, leadership, psychodynamics and change management. He also supervises a number of PhD and DBA students.
Career overview
Ishan completed his PhD under the supervision of Professor Yiannis Gabriel from the University of Bath. His PhD was in Psychoanalysis and Organisations Behaviour, titled 'Envy as a defence against Lack: a psychoanalytic inquiry into destructive workplace emotions'. He holds a MPhil in Psychology and MSc in Organizational and Social Psychology from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a BA (Hons) in Sociology and Philosophy. He also has a PG Cert. in Academic Practice from Lancaster University.
Prior to joining NBS, Ishan was a Lecturer in Leadership and Management Studies at Lancaster University Business School and a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow & Lecturer at Lund University, Sweden. He has been a Visiting Professor at EMLYON and INSEEC (France), GDGWI and IIM-U (India) and ISCTE (Portugal).
In addition to research and scholarship, Ishan is an experienced psychodynamic coach and offers organisational consultancy, leadership development and executive coaching.
Ishan is a Chartered Psychologist (CPsychol) and an Associate Fellow (AFBPsS) of the British Psychological Society, Fellow of Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).
Research areas
Ishan’s research draws on critical theoretical perspectives to explore the following interconnected areas:
- Subjectivity and emotions at work, particularly emotional dynamics of organisational processes
- Psychoanalytic approaches to understanding organisational life (notably, unconscious dynamics at work, anxiety and narcissism)
- Leadership & identity studies (e.g., dark side of leadership and leader dysfunctions, followership)
- Mental health and wellbeing (e.g., workplace sabotage and suffering, how contemporary organisational systems affect and damage our subjective sense of self, whistleblowing)
- Qualitative methodology (e.g., free association technique, sense-making, narrative and storytelling methodology)
As an experienced PhD supervisor, Ishan would welcome applications in any of the areas mentioned above.
Ishan has been PI and CI on a number of funded projects and is currently working on a large £180,000k KTP project funded by Innovate UK-UKRI on culture change. He is also subject advisor for a large EU-Interreg project on sustainability and management (€700K) and collaborator on smaller funded research projects exploring mental health practices within HEA, speak-up cultures, leadership dysfunctions, and whistleblowing.
His current research and paper projects explore topics such as: leadership and the unconscious, whistleblower subjectivity, organisations in crisis, grief management, and rethinking masculinities.
Ishan is the Co-lead of the NBS Health and Wellbeing Research Network and Co-lead of the Org studies research group at LSE.
External activity
- Visiting Professor, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
- Editorial Board Member, Journal of Management Studies (CABS 4*)
- Custodian and Coordinator, International Organisational Storytelling Seminar Series (founded in 2001 by Prof. Yiannis Gabriel)
- Reviewer: International Journal of Management Reviews, British Journal of Management; Organisation Studies, Human Relations, Organisation and Journal of Business Ethics.
- Member: Academy of Management, European Group of Organisation Studies, British Psychological Society, Royal Society of Arts, The International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organisations, European Foundation for Management Development, European Academy of Management, and the Psychotherapy Action Network.
Sponsors and collaborators
Dr Jalan frequently collaborates with colleagues from:
- London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
- Bath School of Management
- Liverpool University
