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Professor Maria Daskalaki PhD, FHEA, MCIPD 

Head of Department for HR Management and Organisational Behaviour, Professor of HRM and Organisation Studies 

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Maria Daskalaki is a Professor of HRM and Organisation Studies and Head of HRM & OB Department at Southampton Business School.  

Maria is a scholar in the field of organisation studies. Her latest research on ‘Social and Solidarity Economy in Crisis: An Ethnographic Analysis of New Forms of Organizing’ was supported by the British Academy of Management, Transitions 2 Grants Scheme: 2015-2017 (Grant Reference Number: BAMTRANS2_2015_14; in collaboration with Prof Marianna Fotaki, Warwick Business School). This project explores new forms of organizing (and organisation-creation) in relation to entrepreneurship and social transformation. In particular, Maria studies the ways through which social transformation is related to community action and public/social entrepreneurship. By focusing on socio-economic environments in flux, her published work proposes frameworks, which can pave the way towards embedded and socially transformative organizing.  Her published articles also contribute to the study of a) Liminality, crisis and identity work; b) Unemployment, gender and careers transformation; c) Solidarity spaces and structures of autonomy and d) Organizing, values practices and Solidarity Economy. 

Maria also leads a project, ‘Stories on the Move’, which explores translocal careers and mobility as organizational phenomena by considering the effects of cosmopolitan careers on personal and professional identities. This project explores how mobility/translocal experiences in general have wide-ranging implications for our understanding of work, careers & organizing (storiesonthemove website).

Her ongoing engagement with issues of self-organisation, care and solidarity as well as gender, space and work futures, is reflected on her latest research projects, namely: 1) Exploring the gender dynamics of working-from-home in the (post) Covid-19 world of work
(2) ‘Lockdown Stories’: Community-driven initiatives of solidarity and care during the new coronavirus pandemic, Covid-19. Her work has been published in Environment and Planning A, Human Relations, Organization Studies, Journal of Management Inquiry, International Journal of Human Resource Management, and Journal of Vocational Behavior among others. She has organised and chaired conferences tracks at national and international level. Recently her paper titled 'Unemployment as a Liminoid Phenomenon: Identity Trajectories in Times of Crisis' has been selected as one of the Top 12 published in Human Relations (CABS 4) in 2018. You can watch a Vodcast of this work here.

She is in the Editorial Board of Organization Studies, and she is a frequent reviewer for Human Relations, Gender, Work and Organisation, Organization, EMR, and Organization Studies. Maria is the academic advisor of the Caravan Project, a project and a digital platform that received funding by SNF (Stavros Niarchos Foundation). The interventions of the team enhance community engagement and transformative social action through fostering spaces of/for storytelling (Caravan project website).

Maria holds a PhD in Organisation Studies from Royal Holloway, University of London, and an MA in Organisational Analysis and Behaviour from Lancaster University. Prior to joining Southampton Business School in 2020, she worked as a Professor of Organisation Studies at Roehampton University and Associate Professor and Academic Liaison Director of Overseas Collaborations at Kingston Business School, Kingston University.

 

Research interests

  • Social and Solidarity Economy (social enterprises, workers’ cooperatives, civil society and community organizations and solidarity initiatives).
  • Grassroots organising and social movements
  • Auto-ethnographic approaches in Organisation Studies
  • Post-work imaginaries and alternative organisations

She is willing to supervise PhD theses in these subject areas and discuss topics with potential candidates.

PhD supervision

Supervised 3 Doctoral Projects to completion within Kingston University 2010 (Doctorate in Business Administration), and PhD's in 2012 and 2013.

Current doctoral projects I supervise:

Alternative organising and sustainable food initiatives: A multimethod exploration of values and value practices (Gjorevska Natasha, Roehampton University).

‘Stirring the Pot’: The British Armed Forces Post-2010, and the ‘Monstrous Regimen’ of Women (Joanne Mackowski, Roehampton University).

Research projects

Current Projects

  1. Exploring the gender dynamics of working-from-home in the (post-) Covid-19 world of work.
  2. ‘Lockdown Stories’: Community-driven initiatives of solidarity and care during the new coronavirus pandemic, Covid-19.

Recent Projects

Social and Solidarity Economy in Crisis: An Ethnographic Analysis of New Forms of Organizing
(PI: Prof Maria Daskalaki, in collaboration with Prof Marianna Fotaki, Warwick Business School). This was work was supported by the British Academy of Management (BAM), Transitions 2 Grants Scheme: 2015-2017 (Grant Reference Number: BAMTRANS2_2015_14).

This project focused social and solidarity economy initiatives in response to the Global Financial crisis of 2008 as instances of community organising and sites for the co-production of ideas, knowledge, practices and resources. It included social and solidarity economy initiatives, part of a wider landscape of alternatives emerging in crisis-stricken Greece, and explored their capacity to constitute new organisational forms. The study applied a longitudinal perspective involving multi-method qualitative approaches such as repeated interviews with key participants, ethnographic observations, and digital ethnography of publicly available documents, materials and cultural productions from various relevant web sources. The research findings point to the transformational capacity of these new forms in contexts of instability and flux, and their ability to create new forms of sociality and active citizenship.

This project contributes to literature and practice of organising in crisis and austerity-driven economies by unveiling the processes through which social economy and solidarity initiatives co-produce new organisational forms; and identifying the ways through which social economy and solidarity initiatives participate or contribute to social transformation in both local and translocal levels.

Findings from this project are included in the following journal articles:

Daskalaki, M. Fotaki, M. & Simosi, M (forthcoming). The gendered impact of the financial crisis: Struggles over social reproduction in Greece, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0308518X20922857

Fotaki, M., & Daskalaki, M. (2020). Politicizing the Body in the Anti-Mining Protest in Greece. Organization Studies, https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0170840619882955

Daskalaki, M., Fotaki, M. & Sotiropoulou, I. (2018). Values Practices and Community Organizing: The Case of Alternative Exchange Networks. Organization Studies. 40(11), 1741-1765.

(2) Crisis, Gender and Identities.

By focusing on socio-economic environments in flux, her published work also focuses on the gendered effects of the crisis and proposes frameworks for the study of individuals’ capacity to challenge the neoliberal restructuring of work and the possibilities for transformation in periods of high and persistent unemployment.

The project includes the following strands: a) Liminality, crisis and identity work; b) Unemployment, gender and careers transformation. Findings from this project have been disseminated in various conferences, including Academy of Management and EGOS, and academic journals. For example, her paper titled 'Unemployment as a Liminoid Phenomenon: Identity Trajectories in Times of Crisis' has been selected as one of the Top 12 published in Human Relations (CABS 4) in 2018. You can watch a Vodcast of this work here.

 

Stories On the Move: Translocal Work & Digital Communities of Practice

 This project explores translocal careers and mobility as organizational phenomena by considering the effects of cosmopolitan careers on personal and professional identities. It focuses on translocal identities that enact and perform intermediate spaces where temporary displacement and perpetual translocation may not only be inevitably experiences but also actively pursued by individual employees/organizations. The project also includes an online platform, a ‘blog of blogs’ where participants can to tell their own stories of living and working across borders (personal ‘mini-blogs’). In this virtual space, the project participants engage with other participants to help shape the emerging landscape of mobile work patterns and cosmopolitan careers. You can access the page of the project here: storiesonthemove website

I am a member of the Caravan Project, a project that enhances community engagement and transformative social action through fostering spaces of/for storytelling

 

Research group

Centre for Work and Organisations

  • Head of Department (HRM &OB)
  • Member of editorial board of Organization Studies.
  • Academic advisor for the Caravan Project, a project that enhances community engagement and transformative social action through fostering spaces of/for storytelling (Caravan project website).

I am currently involved in the MSc in HRM and particularly the Contemporary Isssues at HRM module. In my previous academic roles, I designed and led several UG and PG modules (MBA, MA in the Creative Economy, MSc Internatioanl HRM and MBA), including Managing Peiople and Organisations, Business Ethics and Research Methods. I have supervised to completion students in the PhD programme. Also, for a number of years, I was the Academic Director of International Collaborations at Kingston Business School, Kingston University.

Professional affiliations

I am a FHEA and an Academic Member of CIPD.

Professor Maria Daskalaki
Southampton Business School, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
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