Zander Wedderburn

Wedderburn was born in Edinburgh in 1935.[1] His father was Alexander Archibald Innes Wedderburn, a lawyer and auditor to the Court of Session. His mother was Ellen Innes Jeans. He attended Edinburgh Academy at which he obtained the position of Dux or leading student. After a period of National Service he proceeded to Exeter College, Oxford from which he graduated in 1959 with a degree in Psychology, Philosophy and Physiology. He and Jeffrey Gray, his supervisor, subsequently published the findings of his undergraduate project.[2] After graduation, he worked in various industrial relations positions until he was appointed as lecturer at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh in 1968. He rose through the ranks and retired as Professor Emeritus in 2000. After his retirement, he founded the publishing company Fledgling Press.[3]

At Heriot-Watt, he taught occupational psychology in the School of Management.[4] Most of his teaching was in the area of making occupational psychology available to business students and engineers, and in his final three years he established a part-time MSc in Occupational Psychology taught jointly with Strathclyde University.

His main research impact was on hours of work and shiftwork, where he became an internationally known authority, building on a British Steel Corporation Fellowship in 1970 to 1972. In 1991, Heriot-Watt University awarded him a PhD in 1991 for his research on shiftwork.

His particular interest was in the interface between research and practice, with several measured practical interventions, a ten-year stint as editor of the Bulletin of European Shiftwork Topics,[1] and founding editor of the Shiftwork International Newsletter. He was President of the British Psychological Society in 2003/2004,[4] only the third occupational psychologist to achieve this in the past fifty years.[5]

He died of oesophageal cancer on 23 February 2017, aged 81.[6]

• President, British Psychological Society (2003-2004)
• Fellow, Working Time Society.[7]

In 1960, Wedderburn married Bridget Johnstone. They had four children and eight grandchildren.

• Wedderburn, A. A. I. (1967) Social factors in swiftly rotating shifts. Occupational Psychology, 41, 85–107.
• Wedderburn, A. A. I. (1972) Sleep patterns on the 25-hour day in a group of tidal shiftworkers. Studia Laboris et Salutis, 11, 101–106.
• Keenan, A. and Wedderburn, A. A. I., (1975) Effects of non-verbal behaviour of interviewers on candidates' impressions. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 48, 129–132.
• Wedderburn, A. A. I. (1975) EEG and self-recorded sleep of two shiftworkers over four weeks of real and synthetic work. In Experimental Studies of Shiftwork, edited by W. P. Colquhuoun et al., Forschungsberichte des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen 2513.
• Wedderburn, A. A. I. (1978) Some suggestions for increasing the usefulness of psychological and sociological studies of shiftwork. Ergonomics, 21, 827–833.
• Keenan, A. and Wedderburn, A. A. I. (1980), Putting the boot on the other foot: candidates' descriptions of interviewers. ;;Journal of Occupational Psychology, 53, 81–89
• Wedderburn, A. A. I. (1987) Unintentional falling asleep at work: what can you do about it In Contemporary advances in shiftwork research , ed. Oginski et al., Krakow, Medical Academy.
• Wedderburn, A. A. I. (1987) Sleeping on the job: the use of anecdotes for recording rare but serious events. Ergonomics, 30, 1229–1233.
• Wedderburn, A. A. I. (1991) Guidelines for shiftworkers. Bulletin of European Shiftwork Topics 3. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, Dublin.
• Wedderburn, A. A. I. (1992) How fast should the night shift rotate? A rejoinder. Ergonomics, 35, 1447–1451
• Wedderburn A. A. I. and Scholarios, D. (1993) Guidelines for shiftworkers: trials and errors. Ergonomics, 36, 211–217
• Wedderburn, A. A. I. (1993) Teaching grandmothers how to suck eggs: do shiftworkers need rules or guidelines? Ergonomics, 36.
• Wedderburn, A. A. I. (1995) Men and women who like continuous shiftwork are more 'hardy': but what does it mean? Work & Stress, 9, 206–210.
• Quinn, K. M., King, C., Slawek, K. and Wedderburn, A. A. I. (1995) The effectiveness of an individually tailored health education intervention for 24hr shiftworkers. Paper presented at the XII Symposium on Night and Shiftwork, Connecticut.
• Monk, T. H., Folkarc, S. and Wedderburn A. A. I. (1996) Maintaining safety and high performance on shiftwork. in Applied Ergonomics, 27, 17–23
• Wedderburn A. A. I. Rankin D. (2001) An intervention using a self-help guide to improve the coping behaviour of nightshift workers and its evaluation. HSE Books.

• Alexander Wedderburn's publishing company Fledgling Press