Keynote speakers

Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (Cnam), Paris, France.

Presentation title:­

Pierre Falzon is Professor of Ergonomics and neurosciences of work at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (Cnam), an academic institution located in Paris, France.

Pierre Falzon is the head of the Centre de Recherche sur le Travail et le Développement (CRTD; Center for research on work and development) and of the Ergonomics Lab, part of the CRTD. His present research interests concern on one hand constructive ergonomics, competence development and enabling environments, on the other hand human and organizational reliability (especially in aeronautics and medicine). On a more general level, he is interested in epistemological issues related to the practice of ergonomics and to ergonomics as a discipline.

Between 2000 and 2006, he has been successively Secretary General, then President of the International Ergonomics Association, world federation of national ergonomics societies.  

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Professor Geert Van Hootegem,

Faculty of Social Sciences, KU Leuven, Belgium

Total workplace innovation - the paradigm that will change the organisation

Geert Van Hootegem is a professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at KU Leuven, where he teaches the following courses: sociology of labour, sociology of organisations, critical management studies and change management. He has a PhD in Sociology and conducts research at the Centre for Sociological Research (CeSO). His research unit Labour Organisation and Organisational Change is currently involved in research projects related to labour organisation, globalisation, quality of labour, stress and teamwork.

Geerts research expertise covers: quantitative and qualitative research; workshops and consultancy concerning: labour market tendencies, new production concepts, work organisation, team based work, work load; qualification profiles; redesign of work organisation; flexibility; wellbeing at work and information society.  

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Professor Penelope Sanderson

Schools of ITEE, Psychology and Medicine, The University of Queensland, Australia

Presentation title:  

Penelope Sanderson is Professor of Cognitive Engineering and Human Factors at The University of Queensland, where she has appointments in the Schools of Psychology, of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, and of Medicine. After receiving her PhD from University of Toronto she worked for many years at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before returning to her native Australia. 

The general area of Penelope's research is cognitive systems engineering, where she has been influenced by and has contributed to applications of cognitive work analysis. Together with her students, she has focused particularly on developing principles for the design of visual and auditory displays to be used in safety-critical systems, such as power plant control rooms and medical electrical equipment. In recent work she has applied cognitive work analysis to safety audits and organisational design. Further recent work brings systems and distributed cognition perspectives to the issue of interruptions and distractions in the workplace. 

Penelope is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and also of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES). She has received the HFES Distinguished International Colleague Award, the HFES Paul Fitts Educator Award, and has twice won the HFES Jerome Ely Award for the best paper in the journal Human Factors. She has also received the American Psychological Association Division 21 Franklin Taylor Award for Distinguished Contributions to Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology.

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Professor Peter Hasle

Centre for Industrial Production, Aalborg University Copenhagen

 Presentation title:

Peter Hasle is a professor at the Centre for Industrial Production, Department of Business and Management, Aalborg University. His former positions include a professorship at the National Research Centre for the Working Environment and positions at the Technical University of Denmark, at CASA (independent research centre), the International Labour Organization and the Occupational Health Service.

Peter Hasle has extensive publications in international journals, books and book chapters. He has also been a keynote speaker at several international conferences. Peter Hasle’s research interests lie in integration of the work environment in management and operation, organisational social capital, sustainable work, lean, and organisation of work environment programmes.

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Professor Jody Hoffer Gittell

Brandeis University, United States

Presentation title:

Transforming Relationships for Organizational Change 

Jody Hoffer Gittell is a professor of management at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management. She received her PhD from the MIT Sloan School of Management and taught at the Harvard Business School before joining the faculty of Brandeis University.

Gittell's research explores how coordination by front-line workers contributes to quality and efficiency outcomes in service settings. She has developed a theory of relational coordination, proposing that work is most effectively coordinated through relationships of shared goals, shared knowledge and mutual respect. Through the design of work systems it is demonstrated how organizations can support relational coordination. Gittell leads the Relational Coordination Research Collaborative, an international network of practitioners and researchers seeking to transform relationships for high performance using the framework and tools of relational coordination, and serves as co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer for Relational Coordination Analytics.

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