The idea of trying to organize organizational scholars working on the emotions field originally hatched at a dinner in Cincinnati during the 1996 Academy of Management meeting.

The dinner was attended by the participants in a Symposium chaired by Neal Ashkanasy at that meeting, entitled “Emotions in the Workplace: Not Just Skin Deep”. Present at the dinner were Sigal Barsade, Anat Rafaeli, Michael Pratt, and Neal Ashkanasy. Blake Ashforth and Russell Cropanzano were the other participants in the symposium and contributed useful ideas. By early 1997, the email discussion group Emonet was under way, and Wilfred Zerbe and Charmine Härtel agreed to help Neal Ashkanasy with conference papers and editing a book on Emotions in the Workplace. This book has turned into a series.

Gavin Nicholson joined Neal shortly after as Research Assistant, and was the first person responsible for the Emonet web page. In 1998 Jacob Eisenberg took over as Emonet Webmaster from Gavin. When Jacob accepted an appointment in Europe, Marie Dasborough took over as webmaster. Marie however has also moved on to a position in the USA. The website was taken over by Sally Russell from Griffith University, Australia, and later on by Alana Dorris from The University of Queensland, Australia. The current webmaster is Audrey Teh from The University of Sheffield, UK.

Please feel free to e-mail Audrey at aylteh1@sheffield.ac.uk with any comments or suggestions on the website.