Oral Presentation by Maria Kordowicz¹
¹ Regent’s University London, United Kingdom
TIME: Wednesday, 15 July, 10:30 – 12:00
Location: Room 2
Session: 10
Abstract
This work examines the escalating use of redundancies within English higher education and analyses their implications for academic identity and wellbeing. Situating contemporary job losses within a broader context of financial precarity, demographic change, and policy instability, it is argued that redundancies have become a hypernormalized routine managerial response rather than an exceptional measure. Drawing on social identity theory, symbolic interactionism, and organisational identity scholarship, academic identity is conceptualised as relational, socially situated, and morally charged, while being shaped by institutional power and labour market conditions. It is demonstrated how managerial narratives of financial inevitability and strategic necessity depoliticise redundancy decisions, marginalising the human costs while normalising harm. Redundancies are shown to disrupt core identity scaffolds of academic work, namely autonomy, disciplinary belonging, collegiality, and vocation, producing profound identity shock, moral distress, and deteriorating wellbeing among both displaced staff and those who remain. The analysis further highlights how these processes intersect with existing inequalities, while hollowing out disciplinary capacity, particularly in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. The article concludes that redundancies in the UK higher education sector represent not only a labour and wellbeing crisis but a fundamental threat to the integrity and sustainability of the academic professions. Protecting academic identity and wellbeing is therefore positioned as central, rather than ancillary, to the future of higher education.