Torkild Thanem

About me
Professor of Management & Organization Studies, Stockholm University.

Director of the MSc programme in Management, Organization & Society.

Associate Editor of Organization: The Critical Journal of Organization, Theory & Society.

Teaching
I have long experience of teaching and supervising undergraduate, graduate, doctoral and post-experience students in management, organization and change. I currently teach doctoral and masters courses in qualitative research methods.

Research
I am particularly interested in how people within and around organizations express and experience their bodily selves, how they relate to the embodied identities of other people, and how they deal with prevailing pressures and expectations in organizational life. This raises political and ethical questions around what it means to work in contemporary organizations – how our lives and bodies are managed, and how we might pursue joyful relations with others in concord with, or in conflict with, organizational structures and cultures. In my previous research, I have explored these questions in the realms of workplace health promotion, consultancy firms, transgender politics, leadership, and urban planning. With funding from the Swedish Research Council, I am currently completing an ethnographic study about the performance culture in Swedish sportswear company Björn Borg. My most recent book is Embodied Research Methods (with David Knights, published by Sage in 2019).

Research areas: Corporate performance cultures; workplace health promotion; leadership; transgender; embodied methods; organizational ethics.