Mark de Rond

Mark de Rond is Professor of Organisational Ethnography at Cambridge Judge Business School, Cambridge University. His latest book, Doctors at War: Life and Death in a Field Hospital, was published in April 2017 by Cornell University Press.

Mark de Rond is a Professor of Organisational Ethnography at Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. He studies people by living with them under similar conditions for extended periods to better understand how they experience, and develop meaningful relations to, the world around them. A recurring feature of his work is the variety of human experience in (relatively) extreme contexts, with a particular focus on how people work together to solve problems in challenging environments.

His fieldwork has included prolonged stints with doctors and nurses at war (in Afghanistan), Boat Race crews (Cambridge), adventurers on the river Amazon, stop-the-war activists on a walk from Berlin to Aleppo and, for the past three years, paedophile hunters. In recognition of his work, he was awarded one of only two UK Fulbright Distinguished Scholarships (which took him to Stanford), and several Best Published Article awards from the Academy of Management, the most significant scholarly body in the field. Prizes and accolades for his books include the George R Terry Book Award and EGOS Best Book Award, as well as selection in the 2008 Financial Times Best Business Book, 2008 BBC Best Sporting Reads, and 2019 Metro’s Thirty Best Sports Books in 30 Years. His fieldwork has featured in The Economist, TIME, The Financial Times, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Week, Der Spiegel, Forbes, The Huffington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, The Lancet, and on the BBCs Thinking Allowed, Thought for the Day, and World Service, among others. He holds a Guinness World Record for the first unsupported row of the Amazon.