Dr Maria Kordowicz

Title: The Hypernormalization of Redundancy in UK Higher Education

Abstract: Hypernormalization is the condition in which a false or dysfunctional system is widely recognised as failing, yet collectively treated as normal and unavoidable. Drawing on the work of Bal and others (2023), the talk is an examination of how redundancy in higher education has become hypernormalized through managerialist narratives and the repetition of restructuring cycles, embedded as routine tools of financial and strategic governance. Hypernormalization is used to explain why staff are expected to accept instability as permanent and unchangeable, deprofessionalising and undermining academic identities, and dehumanising the scholar as a financial burden. After tracking the 'polycrisis' culminating from policy mandates and financial mismanagement, the talk concludes by calling for renewed collective challenge to these assumptions and the systems that sustain them.

Biography: Maria is a Chartered Psychologist and Professor of Organisational Psychology. She is Director of Psychology and Research Programmes at Regent's University London. Maria was formerly Quality Improvement Research Fellow at the Department of Population Health Sciences, King's College London, and the late Professor Mark Ashworth's and Professor Ewan Ferlie's PhD Student in Health Services Research. She continues to co-develop the mental health outcome measure PSYCHLOPS with Dr Peter Schofield and is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Department. Maria is Visiting Professor in Organisational Psychology at the City Institute of Higher Learning in Canada. She is the co-author of the books 'Quality Improvement in Healthcare' (SAGE) and 'The Absurd Workplace' (Palgrave Macmillan).