About the IAWBH

Our History

The IAWBH is the world's leading international association of scholars, practitioners, and policy makers with an interest in understanding, researching, and addressing workplace bullying and harassment, including by exploring interventions to address these phenomena. 

While the IAWBH was formally founded as an association at a scholarly conference in Montréal, Canada, in 2008, there had already been a series of related biennial conferences hosted and conducted by the founding group of senior academic researchers in the workplace bullying and harassment field. These researchers included Ståle Valvatne Einarsen, Charlotte Rayner, Helge Hoel, Duncan Lewis, Angelo Soares, Mona O´More, Micheal Sheehan and Annie Høgh. These earlier conferences included Portsmouth (1998), Brisbane (2000), London (2002), Bergen (2004), Dublin (2006) and Montreal (2008).

The founders met in person for the first time as a group in London in 2002 at a conference hosted by Andy Liefooghie and supported by public conference funding. The surplus from this conference was then used to support future conferences by providing a degree of security for the conference hosts. Since that time the residual conference monies have continued to provide seed funding for future conferences. In short, those original funds provided a highly valuable start for this association.

While the 2002 London conference could perhaps have been labelled the first, at the time of planning, the founders could not have foreseen that these biennial conferences would become a tradition. When Ståle Valvatne Einarsen hosted the Bergen conference in Norway in 2004, he considered it would have been unfair to call it the first conference of the IAWBH, as Norway could have done. The organisers also recognised that a large related conference with many international researchers had been hosted by Charlotte Rayner at the University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK, in1998 with a pre-conference meeting for a group of researchers. This conference saw a special Issue in an Australian journal which included papers from Rayner's meeting. In addition, Michael Sheehan then hosted a conference in Brisbane, Australia, in 2000 which was attended by several the Association's founders.  

Since its conception, the Association has grown to over 300 members from over 30 countries. It continues to coordinate a biennial worldwide conference. Our most recent conference, the 14th IAWBH international conference was held in Huddersfield, UK, in June 2024, as an in-person only event. The 13th IAWBH was a hybrid conference held in San Diego, USA in 2022 while our 12th international conference was held totally on-line in 2020 in Dubai, in the UAE, consequent to the global pandemic. Our 11th international IAWBH conference was held in Bordeaux, France, in June 2018.  

During non-conference years, the Association holds international Masterclasses - in  2019 these were held in London and Israel. In 2024, Masterclasses were held from Australia-New Zealand and the USA. Our members receive a newsletter and can join and participate in our LinkedIn group.

OUR Governance

From a governance and administrative perspective, the IAWBH is a not for profit organisation run by volunteers. It operated out of Norway for many years and until late 2024, when operations transferred to Australia. The IAWBH is currently an incorporated association registered in the Australian Capital Territory, Australia.