Extreme Contexts Unit

Dr Adrian Marrison

Adrian Marrison, PhD (Cambridge), is an organisational ethnographer who studies how people engage with their work, their occupations, and the organisations that shape them – particularly when risk, uncertainty, and danger are part of everyday life. As Assistant Professor of Organisation & Work at Warwick Business School and Co-Director of its Extreme Contexts Unit, he has spent extended periods embedded in challenging work environments, including a twelve-month, full-time ethnography inside a prison and (as analyst) collaborative research on citizen policing groups. His teaching draws on these themes to explore how people and organisations navigate change and complexity in everyday work. His research has been recognised in top academic journals such as

The Academy of Management Journal and through honours including Finalist for the 2024 Grigor McClelland Doctoral Dissertation Award.

Dr Derin Kent

Derin Kent is Associate Professor of Organisation Studies at Warwick Business School and Co-Director of its Extreme Contexts Unit. He specialises in ethnographic research with people who work in physically or psychologically dangerous settings. Over the years, this has meant embedding with participants ranging from storm chasers to seafarers to disaster relief teams to derive insights into how people and organisations thrive under adversity. His research appears in top academic journals including Academy of Management Journal, Organization Studies, and Organization Theory, and outlets like Harvard Business Review and The Conversation

Prior to joining Warwick, Derin was a postdoc at Aalto University (Finland) and obtained his PhD at Queen’s University (Canada). Outside of academia, Derin is an outdoor enthusiast and an Operational Team Leader at the British Red Cross.

Professor April Wright

April Wright is Professor of Organization Studies at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick. Her research broadly examines the processes of how institutions, professions and organizations are maintained, changed and disrupted, with particular theoretical and empirical interests in frontline professional work, values, extreme contexts and place. She has conducted research studies in a wide variety of empirical contexts, including hospital emergency departments in Australia, English County cricket, doctors in Kenya, natural disasters in Australia, management education, and social housing. Her work applies Institutional and Organizational Theory, multi-level processes, and inductive qualitative methods such as interviews and participant observation. Her research has been published in leading including Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, Organization Theory, and Journal of Business Venturing. April is an Associate Editor of JMS Says at Journal of Management Studies, a former Associate Editor at the Academy of Management Learning and Education and Journal of Management, and serves on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Journal, Organization Studies and Organization Research Methods.

Professor Davide Nicolini

Davide Nicolini is Professor of Organisation Studies at Warwick Business School and coordinates the IKON Research Centre and co-ordinates the Practice, Process and Institution Research Programme and the KIN network. His current research focuses on the development of the practice-based approach and its application to phenomena such as expertise, managerial knowing and attention, collaboration, safety and technological innovation in organizations. He is also interested in the refinement and promotion of processual, relational and materialist research methods. He has used these approaches to study healthcare organizations, managerial work, construction sites, factories, public organizations, cybersecurity, pharmacies, and scientific labs.