I chose to study at LUMS because I wanted to work with one of the most prestigious researchers in the field of occupational stress, Cary Cooper, who was my PhD in Management supervisor. His support and enthusiasm made my PhD journey that much easier, despite the fact that my PhD project actually failed, and ended up in a (published!) paper entitled “Autopsy of a failure”. I also co-edited a book with Springer in 2015 entitled “Derailed organizational interventions” after my PhD experience. Cary had full confidence in my ability to learn from a failed organisational change, and he was right. I still to this day collaborate with him on various projects and it is always a pleasure and a great learning experience to do so.

I really enjoyed the network opportunities there were for PhD students at LUMS, through the various events and activities they put on frequently. It was a highly supportive environment. I particularly appreciated the writing workshops run by Moira Peelo. This involved a writing week with other students, whereby Moira acted as a tutor and was supporting us in our writing process. Since it helped me and several of my PhD colleagues, I plan to organise such workshops at the university I currently teach at.

Being in Europe, and being so close to the Lake District and the pub life meant that I spent a lot of time reading/socializing/writing in pubs. It is such an important part of the British culture, and it is probably what I miss the most about being in the UK! It allowed me to meet various friends and made my PhD journey much more interesting. Overall, my Lancaster experience was highly productive, both in terms of networking and in terms of learning how to carry out research at a high level.

To help secure myself a job after graduation, I contacted the LUMS Careers Team several times and met with their advisers to: structure my CV, find out about job opportunities and to find out about and attend their workshops.

I’m continuing on the tenure-track as an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Business Administration at Laval University (Canada). I teach occupational health and safety in the Management department. My teaching is mostly focused on preventing stress at work by implementing healthy management practices. My research involves the evaluation of the intervention process (how an intervention to create a healthier workplace worked) and the effectiveness of interventions (whether the expected effects were obtained). I am particularly interested in the implementation of the Quebec’s standard “Healthy Enterprise” as well as the Canadian standard for psychological health and safety in the workplace. Currently I am attempting to publish my work in high-impact journals. I am still collaborating with several people in the UK based on the networks I developed whilst I was there, and we are applying for different types of grants in our respective countries.