What we do

The Lab is guided by a belief that knowledge is useful and insightful when it is built from the ‘bottom-up’ as well as ‘top-down’.

To bring this belief to life, the Lab operates around 3 core activities: 

  • Perspectives scaffold the process of ‘bottom-up’ knowledge. They act as sensemaking ‘barometers’ for issues that matter to our community in real-time.

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  • Pathways are formal interactions with community members that explore how emerging organisational themes connect with an active pracademic mindset and identity. One example is the Theory Practice Sessions at LSE, where alumni share reflections from their professional experience and open a conversation with current students on how theory and practice inform one another.

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  • Projects take the form of partnerships between organisational psychology practitioners and current students. Focusing on emerging themes in the workplace the aim is to bring rigour to issues that matter in the real world.

Pracademic Perspectives: Are we still relevant?

Pracademic Perspectives addresses pressing questions for our community in an informed, creative and social manner. The result is a range of real-time outputs distributed through a variety of usable channels.

The latest Pracademic Perspectives addressed a simple, yet profound, question: Are we still relevant? This question taps into an existential moment as each of us reflects on our taken-for-granted role and relevance. The question is crucial for Organisational Social Psychology (OSP) professionals who stand at the front-line of sense-making and help navigate the emerging relational architecture of a very different world.

Central to the Perspectives is a belief that we need to move beyond traditional, ‘old-school’ forms of engagement when producing knowledge. In the most recent case, our group (of 25) captured their thoughts via a variety of creative methods (short voice reflections on their phones) that connected more authentically with the flow of life and work. Prior to this, we shared a set of recent ‘prompting’ papers (with consumer-friendly audio summaries) to sharpen the conversation.

The need for creativity in engagement is more than data capture. Members’ responses were analysed not just to find themes but also to unpack the discordant tensions that often define big moments of change. To facilitate ongoing sense-making we shared the analysis and brought together a group for a live session at the LSE (F2F and Online). This event captured perspectives from members of the OSP community spanning 1999 to 2026. True diversity!

We would like to see how you make sense of the output. The full interim report is available here, feel free to browse through or click here to download it as a PDF.

Remember, future Perspectives sessions will follow wherever the community's attention turns. If you're part of the LSE OSP community and want to contribute your voice, get in touch.

Pracademic Pathways

Meet our contributors!

Seda Ambartsumian

Strategic Communications & Capital Raising

Seda is a strategic communications and business development professional with 17 years of experience working across stakeholder complexity, reputation management, capital raising for investors, portfolio companies, and brands. She has held senior roles at leading communications agencies and in-house positions at venture and investment firms, most recently as Head of Marketing at a global venture fund. She is a graduate of the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at LSE.

Pavlina Kouvela

Pavlina is a Partner at Q5, a boutique consultancy specialising in organisational performance and effectiveness. She leads Q5’s Organisation Development & Culture practice, focusing on supporting clients with talent advisory, leadership effectiveness and large-scale behavioural change. She is accredited Executive and Team Coach and a graduate of LSE’s Master’s in Organisational and Social Psychology.

Partner, Q5

Marina Mayer

Co-Founder & Chief Science Officer, Sway

Marina Mayer is Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer of Sway, a leadership consultancy that helps businesses build adaptive intelligence as they grow through change. Marina holds dual master’s degrees, including an MSc in Organisational & Social Psychology from the London School of Economics. Her award-winning research, How Movement Moves Us, explores how embodiment mediates the social psychological processes of leadership, and she collaborates as a thought leader on embodied intelligence in the age of AI at work.

Scott Anderberg

Chief Executive Officer, Moodle

Scott Anderberg has dedicated his career to supporting organisations around the world to develop and deliver better educational experiences online.  He started this journey in the USA at the eCollege help desk, directly supporting educators and students in their teaching and learning activities and was instrumental in their product, sales and account management functions. Following the acquisition of eCollege by Pearson, Scott spent 15 years in roles spanning from market development across EMEA to establishing and launching Pearson’s Online Program Management business in Australia and leading Pearson’s Online Learning Services business in markets outside of North America. He also holds an MSc in Organisational and Social Psychology from LSE. Scott joined Moodle as CEO in 2024. 

Elena Wilski

Global Head of Innovation Design, LHH (The Adecco Group)

Working at the intersection of behavioural science and emerging technology, Elena designs and experiments with digital tools that help people navigate job changes and career growth. She spots gaps in what people need to move forward and turns ideas into early-stage products that help individuals adapt and make confident decisions about their work.

Christel Errill Wolthoorn 

CEO, Xander Talent

Christel gravitates towards the roles nobody has quite figured out yet. Growing up in Denmark with a natural sense of curiosity, and a built-in interest in human behaviour, her career has become a patchwork with one common thread: every role she has taken on has been seen as new or 'disruptive'. 

She has constructed a career on making change happen inside organisations, leading the cultural transformation for one of the Big 4 in the UK and establishing KPMG Digital and its Global Technology Business, before stepping out of corporate life to run her own consulting firm, then take the helm as CEO of a talent business, and join M&A tech advisory consultancy as COO. Recently, she has become the CEO of JCW Guided Solution, building a team to advise clients on how to navigate the complex question “AI or people”. 

Mads Frank

Global Head of People Analytics & Insights, GSK

Mads is the head of People Data and Analytics at GSK, a leading Biopharma. His team brings together behavioural scientists, data scientists, and AI engineering to deliver insights on the experience, culture, performance, and risk for people globally at GSK. Mads also brings previous experience from both consulting and in-house HR teams, as well as experience as a sports coach. He is a graduate of LSE’s MSc in Organisational and Social Psychology.