The world’s first courses in Humanitarian Work Psychology (HWP) were delivered in Europe this summer by Associate Professor Lori Foster Thompson from North Carolina State University. Broadly defined, HWP is work and organizational psychology with a pro-social edge. It entails researching and applying work and organizational psychology in humanitarian areas, such as poverty reduction and disaster relief and recovery, to name a few examples. Interest in HWP has increased substantially over the past year, with a growing global network of researchers and practitioners expressing a desire to learn about and contribute to this emerging sub discipline. The HWP initiative took a recent step forward a few weeks ago, in Melbourne, at the 27th International Congress of Applied Psychology. During this meeting, Division 1 (the Work and Organizational Psychology division) of the International Association of Applied Psychology met and unanimously voted to establish of a task force, which Thompson will lead, to support the global development of HWP.
This summer’s graduate seminars in HWP were delivered at the Universities of Bologna and Barcelona and concluded in July 2010. They were funded by the European Master on Work, Organizational, and Personnel Psychology (WOP-P), a postgraduate university programme supported by the European Commission through the Erasmus Mundus Programme. As one student remarked, the course “helped us to discover a different way in which we could apply our KSAOs [Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Other characteristics] in pro-bono activities” and “planted a seed that someday will grow.” Another student noted, “I think what we all learned in this course is to ‘Not only be successful, be significant.’”
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