Name: The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations
Price range: $

Breathing the Archive: Tavistock archive activity day

Performance researcher Heni Hale invites you to an exploratory activity day encountering our archive materials. Free, in-person, 14 June 2025 in London

Workshop

Scrambling time and matter in sulphur

Encountering our archive materials through artistic practice-as-research

Clips from the PARCS Grows Everybody Oral Histories

Listen to these clips from the PARCS Grows Everybody Oral Histories via Soundcloud.

The PARCS Grows Everybody Documentary Film

Watch the PARCS Grows Everybody documentary film here.

Aspex Portsmouth

Accessing Archives workshops

Discover the PARCS Grows Everybody oral history archive through these workshops.

Other

Sidestepping

Searching for embodied experiences of work and labour in the Institute’s archive

A.K. Rice: A Forgotten Giant at The Tavistock Institute

Jean Neumann and Antonio Sama trace A.K. Rice’s legacy embedded and captured in articles, books and other source documents.

Lunchtime Talks

How ‘Human Relations’ Got Its Name

The Journal as Boundary Object

Lunchtime Talks

What is restored to the picture by delving into the Tavistock archive?

Alice White’s lunchtime talk provides insight into the people, processes, challenges and opportunities behind the Civil Resettlement Units of the 1940s.

Lunchtime Talks

Exploring Harold Bridger’s Archive

This talk explores the ways in which Harold Bridger shaped the history, memory, and identity of the Tavistock Institute between the years 1947 and c.1990

Lunchtime Talks

Festival — 70 years of the Tavistock Institute

Conference

Everything is scattered and the tower has collapsed

Exploring the role of art in activism at the Art of Management and Organisation Conference.

Funded Doctoral Opportunity

Relational Practices and the Tavistock Institute's Archive

#3 Social Dreaming Matrix: Social Dreaming Matters Through Dream Sharing. Notes from the third matrix 8th November 2021

#2 Social Dreaming Matrix: Social Dreaming Matters Through Dream Sharing. Notes from the second matrix 4th November 2021

#1 Social Dreaming Matrix: Social Dreaming Matters Through Dream Sharing. Notes from the first matrix 1st November 2021

Awakening an Untamed Presence

In conversation with Simone Kennedy, Visiting Artist-in-Residence.

No ostriches in the sand

Working to open up our ‘Born Digital’ archive. In autumn 2014, we established our paper archive at the Wellcome Library. It holds a comprehensive record of the formation, establishment and development of TIHR over a period of 70 years...

#14 Social Dreaming Matrix: Covid-19 – a year on. Notes from 17th June 2021

#15 Social Dreaming Matrix: Covid-19 a year on. Notes from the final matrix and review 24th June 2021

Dreaming Of Compassion

Archer, C (2021) ‘Dreaming Of Compassion’. In K. Waddington (ed.) Towards the Compassionate University: From Golden Thread to Global Impact. London: Routledge.

#13 Social Dreaming Matrix: Covid-19 - a year on. Notes from 10th June 2021

# 12 Social Dreaming Matrix: Covid-19 a year on. Notes from 3rd June 2021

# 11 Social Dreaming Matrix: Covid-19 a year on. Notes from 27 May 2021

# 9 Social Dreaming Matrix: Covid-19 a year on Notes from 13th May 21

#10 Social Dreaming Matrix: Covid-19 a year on. Notes from 20th May

#8 Social Dreaming Matrix: Covid-19 a year on. Notes from 6th May 21

#7 Social Dreaming Matrix: Covid-19 a year on. Notes from 29th April 21

#6 Social Dreaming Matrix: Covid-19 a year on. Notes from 22nd April 21

#5 Social Dreaming Matrix: Covid-19 a year on. Notes from 15th April 21

#4 Social Dreaming Matrix: Covid-19 a year on. Notes from 8th April 21

#3 Social Dreaming Matrix: Covid-19 a year on. Notes from 1st April 21

#2 Social Dreaming Matrix: Covid-19 a year on. Notes from 25th March 21

#1 Social Dreaming Matrix: Covid-19 a year on. Notes from 18th March 21

Social Dreaming Matrix

Online dreaming sessions

Rediscovering Harold Bridger

His Life, Work and Legacy

Harold Bridger in his own words

A Wellcome Trust funded archival project to catalogue the records of Harold Bridger (1909-2005).

#16 Social Dreaming Matrix and Review during the Covid-19 pandemic. Notes from 25th June

#15 Social Dreaming Matrix during the Covid-19 pandemic. Notes from 22nd June

#14 Social Dreaming Matrix during the Covid-19 pandemic. Notes from 18th June

#13 Social Dreaming Matrix during the Covid-19 pandemic. Notes from 15th June

#12 Social Dreaming Matrix during the Covid-19 pandemic. Notes from 11th June

#11 Social Dreaming Matrix during the Covid-19 pandemic. Notes from 8th June

#10 Social Dreaming Matrix during the Covid-19 pandemic. Notes from 4th June

#9 Social Dreaming Matrix during the Covid-19 pandemic. Notes from 1st June

#8 Social Dreaming Matrix during the Covid-19 pandemic. Notes from 28 May

#7 Social Dreaming Matrix during the Covid-19 pandemic. Notes from 21 May

#6 Social Dreaming Matrix during the Covid-19 pandemic. Notes from 18 May

#5 Social Dreaming Matrix during the Covid-19 pandemic. Notes from 14 May

#4 Social Dreaming Matrix during the Covid-19 pandemic. Notes from 11 May

If we were to give the session a title it would be: Lemon Drop Soup to the Superhero • 48 participants – about 34 female/ 14 male • We lost count of dreams.. and associations..

#3 — At the breakfast table he is approached by someone he argued with 34 years ago.

#3 — At the breakfast table he is approached by someone he argued with 34 years ago...

#2 — the letter a. No longer warm, cosy and round but flat with a stick coming out of it — a threat...

#2 — the letter a. No longer warm, cosy and round but flat with a stick coming out of it — a threat...

#1 — rolling an orb along the ground, between the dreamer and another...

#1 — rolling an orb along the ground, between the dreamer and another...

Social Dreaming Matrix

Online dreaming sessions during Covid-19

The Vocational Potential of Anthropology: Teaching Organisational Research Through Practitioner Archives

Cory Pearce. E. and Scott J., (2020). 'The Vocational Potential of Anthropology: Teaching Organisational Research Through Practitioner Archives' in Teaching Anthropology, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 10-24.

The Experience of Being 70 or Over

On Being an Orphan – an untold story

Dynamics at Boardroom Level

Tavistock at ‘Art & Activism’ in Liverpool 2020

Inviting contributions to an arts stream – Across the Universe

Tavistock at ‘Art&Activism’ in Liverpool 2020

I felt like I was there

Working with the digital archives of the Leicester Conference, a post by Karen Kiss.

Archive-A-Live!

A symposium exploring the Tavistock Institute’s archive.

Call for Proposals: Archive-A-Live!

Accepting the Constancy of Subjectivity

Personal reflections from working with the TIHR archive

The Social Dreaming International Network (SDiN)

We warmly welcome the SDiN in a new collaborative partnership.

TIHR wins National Archive Scoping Grant!

Born Digital - kickstarting the next phase of our archive strategy.

Community Matters!

Social media in emergencies: A representative study on citizens’ perception in Germany

Reuter, C., Kaufhold, M. A., Spielhofer, T., & Hahne, A. S. (2017). Social media in emergencies: A representative study on citizens’ perception in Germany. Proceedings of the ACM: Human Computer Interaction (PACM): Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 1(2), 1-19.

Learning the details: when honoring the past liberates the creativity in the present.

Antonio Sama relates how the archive inspired a new relationship with his mentor.

#4 Social Dreaming Matrix Notes From Wednesday 28 November 2018

#3 Social Dreaming Matrix Notes From 22nd November

#2 Social Dreaming Matrix Notes from 16th November

#1 Social Dreaming Matrix Notes from 6th November

TIHR storm Chicago!

Read about the symposium convened by Jean Neumann at this year’s Academy of Management Conference in Chicago.

On not being an academic & representing TIHR at the Academy of Management

‘Tavi-stock-taking’ with Dr Sadie King

Opening the Tavistock Institute’s Archives: Dialogue between Past and Present

International Symposium delivers on 70th festival promise at AOM Annual Meeting

Inviting proposals from experienced Digital Records Management Consultants

Featuring from the ArchLive: Ambient Jam Collective

Keeping you informed about content and resources from our 70th Anniversary Celebrations festival.

Conference: exploring the Tavistock and Portman archives

Thank You Letter from #TIHR70

Bringing you news and photos from our Four Days in October...

Festival Social Dreaming Matrices #4: Friday 20 Oct 2017

Festival Social Dreaming Matrices #3: Thurs 19 Oct 2017

Festival Social Dreaming Matrices #2: Wed 18 Oct 2017

Festival Social Dreaming Matrices #1: Tue 17 Oct 2017

Goodwill greeting from The Rockefeller Foundation

The 70th anniversary of the Tavistock Institute is a significant achievement that deserves all our admiration and attention. Congratulations on organizing yet another incredible festival. We so wish that we could be there with all of you on this special occasion....

Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and Tavistock Clinic: A Conversation Between two Archives

Final Festival Picks

With just a few days to the opening of Reimagining Human Relations in our Time...

Announcing Release of New Material

an invitation from the amazon

Henry Riley: A Personal History of Human Relations

Where are the festival venues?

Animating Evidence

Carrying our history lightly

TIHR’s Coreene Archer and Rita Keegan of the Women Artist’s Slide Library discuss the relevance, value and unexpected similarities between two very different archives. “We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiralling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.” These are the words of the writer Shirley Abbott and I think they contain a deep truth. For me, they are relevant and equally meaningful to an individual and to an organisation. In this piece, I apply their truth to both individual and organisation through the lens of exploring the creation of an archive, a body of work which too is passed from generation to generation. With the passage of time how we think about and understand information changes [...]

Remembering Brendan Duddy: the Secret Peacemaker

Carrying our history lightly

TIHR’s Coreene Archer and Rita Keegan of the Women Artist’s Slide Library discuss the relevance, value and unexpected similarities between two very different archives.

Conversations from the Archive

Impact of Tavistock Group Relations & Individual Consultation

Learning from young leaders in the Peruvian Amazon

BED

Ambient Jam Collective

Testing Times: What Did it Take to be a War Officer in WWII?

Time-Travelling Through the Tavistock Archives

Human Relations 70th Anniversary Workshop

What’s our archive got to do with me? The challenges of collective reflection

Library Tour & Archive Show & Tell

A Participatory Performance: Shadows and Light

Living the Paradox: the Art of the Here and Now

Living on a Prayer: Worship Posture as a Model for Societal Cohesion

TIHR & Tavistock Clinic: Historical Reflections & Thoughts for the Future Tavistock Enterprise

Living Archive Conversations

Exploring Connectedness

TIHR 70 Festival programme goes live

We are delighted to launch the website for ‘Reimagining Human Relations in Our Time’, a festival celebrating 70 years of the Tavistock Institute. At the heart of the festival is the Institute’s archive which over the last two years has been intricately and delicately catalogued at Wellcome Library. These two things coinciding – our anniversary and the launch of the archive – are a great cause for celebration because the insights of our forebears as they tackled past societal challenges, which we have always drawn upon as an organisation, are now available to you [...]

Group Relations Event for the Silver Generation

Crossing Borders

Complexity, Evaluation & Theory of Change

Digital Transformation & Leadership in Times of Industry 4.0

Uncanny Pleasure: All the Colour Nature Possesses

Here is Where I am

Before the Beginning and After the End

Tavistock Poetry Reading

Symposium: In the Shadow & Light of the Archive

Festival Social Dreaming Matrices

Past, Present & Future: From the Tavistock Institute Archive

Object Relations: A Still Life Exhibition

TIHR Projects Over the Decades

Customising TIHR Traditions: Dialogue Towards an International Symposium

Decades On: So where to for Group Relations in South Africa?

History at Work: Building Organisational Memory, Empathy & Compassion

From Dystopias to Desirable Futures in Human Relations

Democracy at Risk: How Group Relations Illuminates

From 'Authority & Leadership' to Identities & Cultures in Violent Conflict

Acting in the Here & Then: The Theatre of Working Together, 2017-2087

Virtual Simulations

Activating the Alumni & Programme Showcase

New Wine in Old Bottles - Intransigent Problems of Health & Social Care

When Things Go Wrong... How Organisational Development Can Help

The Earth Body We Live in and its Energetic Resources

North/South: an English Workshop

Echoes of Fraternity

Welcome to the What Works Wheel

The fight between mould and dust: a free association from the archive

When the boxes from the archive were opened and the material was explored for cataloguing Elena Carter, with a worried look, told the Archive Project Group that one box contained mould and the item would therefore need to be treated/cleaned by Wellcome Trust's Conservation team. Luckily the mould was limited and no major damage was done. I understand that the enemies of archives, and libraries, are fire, flood and man-made catastrophes [...]

Calling for help to enhance Tavistock Institute biographies

Recreating the War Officer Selection Boards – the Social Researcher's experience

Recreating the War Officer Selection Boards – the Historian's experience

Recreating the War Officer Selection Boards - the Archivist's experience

New Materials, New Methodologies: Joining the TIHR Archive Project

As a recently qualified Archivist, I have taken on the role of Project Archivist for this exciting project. In my first blog post, I offer just a short reflection on my new role and what it means to be newly involved at this exciting stage. Beginning a new job always brings that age old mixture of excitement, apprehension and wariness of the unknown. It was no different for me as the new Project Archivist on my first day at the Wellcome Library, foraying into the as yet unrevealed world and materials of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR) [...]

From Ahmedabad to TCBL: an evaluator’s perspective on the Institute’s work in the textiles sector

Papers relating to the Tavistock Institute’s work in the cotton mills have now been catalogued as part of the Tavistock Institute Archive Project and are available for research at Wellcome Library. The archive covers the experimental reorganisation of weaving in both Indian and American cotton mills, from the perspectives of A K Rice and Eric Miller working in the field. Records include project papers, detailed field notes, research material and data, and correspondence. Clothes are something we put on every day. And yet, most of us pay little attention to who makes them, the raw material, skills and technology needed to produce them, where they are made, and the waste that is generated by making and buying clothes. [...]

Changing the story: management panaceas as narrative interventions

Whittle, Susan Rosina (2015) 'Changing the story: management panaceas as narrative interventions', in Anders Ortenblad (ed.) Handbook of Research on Management Ideas and Panaceas, Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, UK; Chapter 10, 173-189.

Stepping into Practice

A review of part 2 Social Dreaming

This time the review began with a shorter social dreaming matrix Facilitation: Valerie Brown and Mannie Sher 10 people were present, 6 dreams and 11 associations were made [...]

Call for Contributions extended!

We are delighted and excited to be issuing this call inviting contributions to our festival in October 2017. Taking place over four days, Reimagining Human Relations in our Time, will be a multi-sited event taking place in the public domain. Its aims are: To engage and expand research interest in the Tavistock Institute’s archive material that is being catalogued at the Wellcome Library. To invite creative participation in our programme of work; our philosophical approach; applied methodologies and their potential in tackling current societal challenges. To offer activities consistent with the Tavistock Institute’s history and practice that will support an improved understanding of wellbeing- in its individual, organisational and societal dimensions. [...]

Podcast: Psychoanalytic Study and the Ethical Imagination: the making, finding and losing of a tradition

Part 2 Social Dreaming Note #6: Tues 28 Feb 2017

Part 2 Social Dreaming #5: Tuesday 28th February: Wellcome Collection Reading Room Facilitation and write-up: Anne Benson and Rachel Kelly The final matrix of this series. 22 people joined. A matrix of few dreams and many associations. The dreams were vivid and detailed [...]

Part 2 Social Dreaming Note #5: Weds 22 Feb 2017

Part 2 Social Dreaming #5: Tuesday 22nd February: Wellcome Collection Reading Room Facilitation and write-up: Camilla Child and Sol Szekir-Papasavva 24 people came to the matrix and 22 stayed 27 dreams were presented and 24 associations made [...]

Part 2 Social Dreaming Note #4: Tues 7 Feb 2017

Part 2 Social Dreaming #4: Tuesday 7th February: Wellcome Collection Reading Room Facilitation and write-up: Coreene Archer and Heather Stradling 15 people attended and all stayed 10 dreams were presented and over 35 associations made. [...]

In Praise of Archives

When we visited the Tavistock Institute archive in 2013 it looked like it had seen better days. It consisted of box files pushed into cupboards. But all the documents were intact and are now gradually being catalogued, thanks to Juliet Scott and her team at the TIHR Archive Project, with support from the Wellcome Library [...]

Mining the archives: exploring the potential for new applications of STS thinking and practice

Audio Recording: Exploring the potential for new applications of STS thinking and practice. In this talk Camilla Child looks to the Tavistock archives and takes us briefly through STS history and current practice. She looks at recent work with fresh eyes to see if we can uncover new understandings for future practice.

Part 2 Social Dreaming Note #3: Tues 24 Jan 2017

Part 2 Social Dreaming Note #2: Thurs 19 Jan 2017

Part 2 Social Dreaming #2: Thursday 19th January: Wellcome Collection Reading Room Facilitation and write up: Elizabeth Cory-Pearce and Mannie Sher The second Social Dreaming event for 2017 had 16 dreamers, 12 of whom stayed until the end of the session 11 dreams were presented Forty four or so associations were made [...]

Part 2 Social Dreaming Note #1: Thurs 12 Jan 2017

Invitation to Dream Again in the Wellcome Library Reading Room

It’s nearly six months since Friday 24th June when we kicked off the first series of Social Dreaming matrices in the Wellcome Library Reading Room. Brexit was unfolding, dreams were colourful and colourless, uncertainty prevailed. The questions we took in to these were on dreams and archival practice, on what happens in the recovery and relocation of an organisation’s archive and the relationship of this material to the world we live in now ...

Some thoughts on the nature of distraction

Distraction surrounds us every day in work: from the ambient clatter and noise of the open plan office, to the ringing and beeping of phones, the flurry of emails, and chatter of colleagues. Today I’ve been thinking today about the nature of distraction at work, but particularly in archival work. Cataloguing requires focus and attention, the careful sifting through of streams of data to try and make order out of chaos. I sit at my desk, my trolley of boxes beside me making a wall, a little archive cave of brown cardboard ...

Writing Without TIHR Archives

Only after I committed to writing the chapter did I remember that TIHR’s archives would be unavailable to me. I had been invited to contribute to a book about people the editors considered “great change thinkers”. I noted that Kurt Lewin, Eric Trist and Fred Emery were claimed already on an initial list of possibilities. I proposed successfully to lead on a chapter about Eric Miller, with colleague, Antonio Sama, leading on one about A. K. Rice ...

Lessons of leadership from another age

It has been virtually impossible over the past month to escape the fiercely contested American presidential campaigns. Newspapers, social media, and television have all been caught up in debating what makes a good leader. Donald Trump was chosen by the people – was he the right choice? ...

“Bringing distinction and quality back to the word consultancy.” - Mannie Sher

Testing times: What did it take to be a War Officer in WWII?

Using materials uncovered in the Tavistock archive, join us for a series of events to recreate war period psychology recruitment methods. Test your mettle through a combination of individual and group tests, including word association, thematic apperception, and some moustaches that Henry Wellcome himself would have been jealous of. Wednesday 16 November 15.00-17.00 Thursday 24 November 19.00-21.00 Friday 2 December 19.00-21.00 In the Reading Room, Wellcome Collection ...

“Eat it! It’s good for you!”: A personal response to the TIHR Fish Fingers Study of 1962

Sweets, Cats and Kitchens: My experience cataloguing the TIHR archive material

On a blue skied Monday in July I made my way to Euston station to join Elena Carter, the Tavistock Institute of Human Relation’s (TIHR) archivist, at the Wellcome Trust. This was the first day of my short placement where I was helping to catalogue the remaining registered document series reports (SA/TIH/B/1) before they were released in early September. As an apprentice at the TIHR opportunities come in a variety of places and as a member of the archive project team it seemed appropriate that I would be able to interact with the material and learn more about how the TIHR became what I now know it to be ...

The ‘Anthropological Thread’ in the Tavistock Institute of Human Relation’s Archive Lunchtime Talk

Object Relations: an exhibition of still life prints, drawings and paintings

Object Relations: an exhibition of still life prints, drawings and paintings by Juliet Scott Helmsley Arts Centre, Yorkshire Tuesday 4th October to Friday 28th October 2016 This exhibition in Helmsley Arts Centre, Yorkshire will be the first iteration of work emerging in my role as artist-in-residence of the Tavistock Institute’s archive project ...

#7 Summer Dreaming: write up of the Social Dreaming Matrices review by Juliet Scott

Held in the Wellcome Library, Reading Room on Wednesday 7th September 2016 Attended by facilitators from the Tavistock Institute; staff from the Wellcome Library and two participants who hadn’t attended any of the matrices but were interested to hear all about them ...

Social Science in Action: reports from Tavistock Institute Archive

From the Archive

Preservation and mutability: salt and the archive – two dynamic systems

I have been thinking about salt a lot recently. Maybe a strange way to start a blog for the TIHR Archive Project but actually there are many connections between the qualities of salt and the archive.

Were you involved in our dreaming about the archive?

Social dreaming #6: Thu 28 July 2016

Social Dreaming Note #5: Tues 19 July 2016

Social Dreaming Note #4: Thurs 14 July 2016

Social Dreaming Note #3: Thurs 7th July 2016

Social Dreaming Note #2: Thursday 30 June 2016

Social Dreaming Note #1: Friday 24 June 2016

Social Dreaming Note: Facilitator’s Meeting

Fitting square pegs into round holes: why a traditional hierarchical arrangement wouldn’t work for the Tavistock Institute archive

So here’s the way we do things in the archive world: You have your boxes of papers, all messy and disorganised. Then you try and impose some order on them, trying to make sense of how the records were originally created and maintained. After a well-earned tea break (of course, a safe distance away from the original, unique documents!), you start to organise them into neat and pretty categories and form a lovely tidy hierarchy, which supposedly reflects the structure and organisation of the creating body. Or that’s the theory anyway ...

Representation, Place, and Equivalent Realities: an Exploration of Relational Perspectives on Representation and Meaning

Izod, Karen (2016). 'Representation, Place, and Equivalent Realities: an Exploration of Relational Perspectives on Representation and Meaning', Organisational and Social Dynamics, Volume 16, Number 1, May 2016, pp. 110-128(19). Karnac Books.

"It’s about the history, the memory of the organisation.” - Juliet Scott

From the Archive

On Institutional Memory and the Role of the Archivist

Since starting this project in October, I’ve been thinking about my role as archivist for the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR). I’ve been considering what it means to open up a previously inaccessible archive collection, and the dynamics of bringing the collection out of the storage centre and into the light. I’ve also been thinking about what we mean when we talk about archives and institutional memory, and the role that an archive plays in organisational development and as a form of socio-cultural intervention ...

The Tavistock Archives: An Open and Closed Case

Alice White who has recently completed PhD research using the archive writes. As the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations’ (TIHR) archives are being catalogued, ready to be opened up to new audiences, I have been thinking a lot about access to knowledge generally, and to knowledge about the TIHR’s history specifically ...

Invitation to dream about the archive: social dreaming at Wellcome Collection

Social Dreaming Matrices at the Wellcome Library Reading room - starting Friday 24th June If dreams are in part the expression of our unconscious, can we work with the archive as the unconscious of organisational life? [...]

From the Archive

Documenting the Archive: Film Footage, Moving Forward

This video is the second record from our series of documenting the beginnings of the archive project. It tells the enthusiastic response from our partners as they comment on the progress of the boxes whilst they were going through the final stage of work before being re homed in the Wellcome Library ...

Healing with Words and Ideas: from past, present to future with Mannie Sher

As an advisory group member of the Archive Project, I was stimulated to think of my personal archive and how to make it available to the TIHR Archive process. After discovering some notes I had made in 1989 when I was part of a Board to which Eric Miller had been invited to consult ...

“Awareness is the difference between looking and seeing, and between hearing and listening.” - Rachel Kelly, on the Yoga Event at the Leicester Conference

From the Archive

An Inspirational Walk

We all know the route we take every day to work; we know what corner to turn and what road to cross. We know what line to take and what change to make as we reluctantly descend the escalators where we cram onto a literal tube filled with people we don’t know yet hate even before we see their faces. However, maybe we didn’t know that our favourite pub to go for drinks with colleagues is actually the oldest pub in town [...]

This Summer

A response from Karen Izod, consultant, coaching practitioner, and professional partner of the Tavistock Institute. I was fascinated to hear of these 'object relations' cards. I remember them well, they formed part of the selection process when I applied to do the clinical social work training at the Tavistock Clinic in 1983 which began what is now a long relationship with both the Clinic and the Institute. We had about 2 minutes per card to write an associative narrative to the shapes and shadows that we saw in them. The whole process took about 30 minutes [...]

Documenting the Archive: Film Footage From Up River

A set of Object Relations Cards – The Story of an Artistic Encounter with Social Science

The single most significant development of my relationship with The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations was the discovery of an area of psychological theory known as Object Relations. I don’t know when I first heard the term but it began to mean something for me when I attended a Group Relations Conference in Israel [...]

From the Archive

The artistry of the archive

Launching our new blog to document the emergent TIHR archive.

Is the Working Hypothesis in the Detail?

I have just finished reading Paura Reverenza Terrore (that can be translated as Fear Reverence Terror). It is a book of “political iconography” (as the subtitle reads) by Carlo Ginzburg, an Italian historian of ideas. The book is a collection of five essays published between 2001 and 2009 and for the first time offered to the Italian reader within one publication...

“Three hundred boxes?! That’s a lot isn’t it?”

“Three hundred boxes?! That’s a lot isn’t it?” Me: “Erm..yeah I guess so” “How do you even start to make sense of all that stuff?” I’ve been having a few conversations along these lines at the moment. The non-archivist I’m talking to will look puzzled as I say the key words: New job. Tavistock Institute. 300+ boxes. 2 years. Archive. Cataloguing [...]

Introducing the Wellcome Element

This article describes the current role of the Wellcome Trust in the Tavistock Institute Archive Project. The partner organisation to the Tavistock Institute’s Archive Project is the Wellcome Trust, “an independent global charitable foundation dedicated to improving health, because good health makes life better”. The Trust provides annually £700 million to support bright minds in [...]

From the Archive

What is the Blog

Working on an organisation’s archive is not just a technical venture aiming at ordering and filing documents. Working on an organisation’s archive is working on an organisation’s history, on an organisation’s identity and primary task and on how this has been shaped over time and space. Working on an organisation’s archive is working with ideas, artefacts, people, memories of people, and strong or faded memories of communities...

Understanding and working with the psychodynamics of practitioner-patient relationships in the manual therapies

Sher, D. & Sher, M. (2015). 'Understanding and working with the psychodynamics of practitioner-patient relationships in the manual therapies'. Journal of Bodywork & Movement Therapies. Vol. 20, pp. 1-7.

The Oedipus Complex, Creativity and the Legacies of Group Relations

Practice: Social Work in Action

Elizabeth Harlow & Karen Izod (2015) 'Special Issue - The Supervision of Social Work Practice'

Evaluation of Child Poverty Pilots: Delivering Improved Services for Separating Parents.

Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, BPSR and TNS-BMRB (2011) Evaluation of Child Poverty Pilots: Delivering Improved Services for Separating Parents. DfE.

Relationship Support Interventions Evaluation

Personal Relationships and Poverty: An Evidence and Policy Review

Stock, L, Corlyon, J, Castellanos Serrano, C, and Gieve, M. (2014). Personal Relationships and Poverty: An Evidence and Policy Review. JRF.

A Partnership of Policing and Health Systems: containing the dynamics of sexual violence

Sher, M. (2015). 'A Partnership of Policing and Health Systems: containing the dynamics of sexual violence'. In: D. Armstrong and M. Rustin (Eds.), Social Defences Against Anxiety: explorations in a paradigm. Tavistock Clinic series. London: Karnac Books.

Resource-ful Consulting: Working with your Presence and Identity in Consulting to Change

Izod, Karen & Whittle, Susan Rosina (2014). Resource-ful Consulting: Working with your Presence and Identity in Consulting to Change, London: Karnac Books.

Barriers to inclusion and successful engagement of parents in mainstream services: evidence and research

Corlyon, J. and La Placaa, V. (2014). 'Barriers to inclusion and successful engagement of parents in mainstream services: evidence and research', Journal of Children’s Services Vol 9, 3, pp. 220-234.

Innovation or Stagnation – Social Work Organisations as Models of Behaviour for Clients

Sher, M. (2014). 'Innovation or Stagnation – Social Work Organisations as Models of Behaviour for Clients', Social Theory, Empirics, Policy and Practice. Vol. 9.

Group Relations Work in China – Challenges, Risks & Impact for Organisational Development

Özdemir, H. & Sher, M. (2014). 'Group Relations Work in China – Challenges, Risks & Impact for Organisational Development', Challenging Organisations & Society. Vol. 3. No. 1. pp. 5012-517.

Capacity Building: What the literature tells us

Whittle S., Colgan A. and Rafferty M. (2012). Capacity Building: What the literature tells us. Dublin: The Centre for Effective Services.

A Reflective Archive

Our history in the present, the archive as organisational development.

Evaluating politically sensitive programmes: the case of Preventing Violent Extremism (Prevent)

G. Iacopini and L. Stock. (2013) Evaluating Politically Sensitive Programmes: The Case of Preventing Violent Extremism (Prevent), British Library MBS Portal, 2013.

Challenges Recruiting Families with Children at Risk of Anti-Social Behaviour into Intervention Trials

Stateva, M., Minton, J., Beckett, C., Doolan, M., Ford, T., Kallitsoglou, A. and Scott, S. (2012). 'Challenges Recruiting Families with Children at Risk of Anti-Social Behaviour into Intervention Trials', Journal of Children’s Services, Vol. 7 (4) pp. 285 – 302.

Social tourism and organised capitalism: research, policy and practice

Corlyon, J. and La Placaa, V. (2013). ‘Social tourism and organised capitalism: research, policy and practice’, Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events, published online: 09 Sep 2013.

Researchers watch this space

Curating a socio cultural and historical record of the Tavistock Institute’s contribution to social change.

The Tavistock Group

Abraham, F. (2013). 'The Tavistock Group'. In The Oxford Handbook of Management Theorists, eds. Morgen Witzel and Malcolm Warner, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Effecting Organisational Change in Large Complex Systems: A Collaborative Consultancy Approach

Consulting to Organisational Implications of Technical Change

Sociotechnology and the Environment: The Tavistocks Contribution to Job and Organisational Design

Three Contemporary Challenges for OD Practitioners

Personality and Work Performance: Some Evidence from Small and Medium-Sized Firms

Dependency, Alienation or Partnership? The Changing Relationship of the Individual to the Enterprise

The Tavistock Institute Contribution to Job and Organisational Design (Volumes 1 & 2)

Models of Organisation: An Introduction for Social Care Professionals

When Technological Innovation is Not Enough. Understanding the take up of Energy Technology

Organisationsentwicklung: Stand der entwicklung und perspektiven

Leadership in Residential Child Care: Evaluating Qualification Training

Evaluation of the New Deal for Disabled People: Innovative Schemes Pilot

Educating Prospective Managers in the Complexity of Organisational Life: Teaching and Learning from a Complexity Perspective

Improving Children's Health (2): An Analysis of Health Improvement Programmes 2000-2003

User Perspectives

The Dynamics of Change: Tavistock Approaches to Improving Social Systems

PARCS Grows Everybody

An intergenerational oral history project celebrating the history and legacy of the Portsmouth Abuse and Rape Crisis Service from 1981-2021.

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