Professor Maria Kordowicz

Maria is a Chartered Psychologist through teaching and research. She is Professor in Organisational Psychology and Director of Psychology and Research at the School of Psychotherapy, Psychology, and Counselling at Regent's. She is the Quality and Research Lead for the School.

Maria has had a 20+ year career in  health and social care criminal justice, community, acute, and primary care settings. education, and research sectors, holding senior leadership and executive positions.

Maria has published academic and popular work in the field of organisation study, with a focus on health organising and employee wellbeing. She is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Community and Health Research Unit at the University of Lincoln, Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the School of Life Course and Population Sciences at King's College London, and Visiting Professor in Organisational Psychology at the City Institute in Canada. 

Maria co-leads the development of the mental health outcome measure PSYCHLOPS at King's College London, which is used globally and endorsed by the World Health Organisation and Medecins Sans Frontieres. Her PhD from King's College London, an organisational ethnography exploring general practice performance supervised by Professors Mark Ashworth and Ewan Ferlie, won the highly commended Emerald health management prize.

In addition, Maria has over 20 years of business ownership experience, including eight years as the Chief Executive of the health and social care research and evaluation agency ResPeo, and mentors business leaders and executives. She is also a longstanding facilitator and strategist and recently worked as a strategic business lead and previously as associate director in the NHS.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Maria became a regular media commentator nationally and internationally on topics related to workforce wellbeing, most notably 'quiet quitting'. She was named as an academic advisor on the COVID-19 response to Parliament. Maria has authored over 50 commissioned evaluation and policy reports on behalf of commercial, public, and charity organisations, including NHSE and The Health Foundation. She co-authored the Universal Healthcare Inquiry Report on behalf of London Southbank University in 2024. Maria has sat on numerous national and international research and evaluation advisory panels, most recently for the NIHR-funded study REACH (Researching Emergency Ambulance calls to Care Homes).

Maria was formerly the Director of the Centre for Interprofessional Education and Learning at the University of Nottingham Medical School, working across 12 health and social care programmes. She was awarded the Fellowship of the Royal Society for Arts, Commerce and Manufactures in recognition of her work in the field of organisational resilience as Founding Director of the Centre for Organisational Resilience at Lincoln International Business School and contribution to quality improvement in health. 

Maria was previously lead for the Master's in Public Health at King's College London, as well as for Business and Health Management programmes at Anglia Ruskin University in London. She also worked as HND Business and Health and Social Care Programme Director in further education settings. Maria has previously served as an External Examiner at London Southbank and Canterbury Christchurch Universities.

She is a longstanding School Governor of over a decade (including a three year term as Board Chair) and a Charity Trustee of the University Mental Health Advisors Network.

Maria's recent books include the co-authored Quality Improvement in Healthcare (Sage) and The Absurd Workplace (Palgrave Macmillan).

• PGCE in Higher Education, Birkbeck
• PhD Health Services Research, King's College London
• MRes Public Policy and Management, Birkbeck
• MSc Mental Health Studies, Institute of Psychiatry
• BSc Psychology with Graduate Basis for Chartership (First Class Honours), University of Westminster
• Diploma in Coaching in Mentoring, Institute of Counselling (In Progress)
• Professional Diploma in Health and Social Care Management, Open University
• Mental Health First Aider
• PRINCE 2, APMG
• Lean Management Green Belt, Siemens Healthineers
• Change Management Practitioner, APMG
• Restorative Justice Facilitator, RJ Working.

For a list of publications, please see:

Maria's ResearchGate Profile

Maria's Google Scholar Profile

Orcid

Maria's research interests broadly encompass: Organisational and Business Psychology, Health and Social Care, Mental Health, Wellbeing at Work, Critical Work Psychology, and Leadership and Management. 

Maria is predominantly a participatory qualitative methodologist and an organisational ethnographer, though she is well-versed in mixed methods. 

Maria has supervised four Regent's Doctoral Counselling Psychology candidates to completion, with one candidate exploring eco-anxiety remaining. She has supervised over 50 Master's and Bachelors dissertations and final year projects in Psychology, Public Health, and Business and Management subjects.

Maria welcomes approaches internally and from external institutions to explore PhD and professional doctoral supervision opportunities. 

British Psychological Society:

• Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow
• Full Member, Division for Teachers and Researchers in Psychology
• Member, Division of Coaching Psychology
• Member, Qualitative Research Methods Section
• Member, Division of Occupational Psychology

Other professional affiliations and memberships:

• Full Member, Institute of Counselling
• Fellow and Chartered Manager, Chartered Management Institute
• Fellow, Higher Education Academy
• Certified Management and Business Educator, Chartered Association of Business Schools
• Certified Principal Business Psychologist, Association for Business Psychology
• Full Member, Institute of Healthcare Management
• Member, Future of Work and Organizational Psychology
• Fellow, Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce
• Q Community Member, The Health Foundation
• Associate, Work Foundation
• Fellow, Royal Society of Medicine
• Fellow, Accredited Counsellors, Coaches, Psychotherapists and Hypnotherapists

As Director of Programmes, Maria teaches and supports content development across the BA Psychology and MSc Psychology Conversion courses.