Role
Maranda is Professor of People and Inclusion and Co-Director of the Centre for People, Work & Organizational Practice at Nottingham Business School.
Career overview
Maranda is a leading scholar of People and Inclusion, with recent publications in journals including Work, Employment & Society, British Journal of Management and Human Resource Management Journal. Her funded research has engaged government, professional bodies, charities and sector partners, including the Government Equalities Office, Royal Academy of Engineering, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), Association of Heads of University Administration, British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and leading charitable funders. She is Director of Research Impact for Nottingham Business School and Co-Director of the Centre for People, Work & Organizational Practice.
Maranda brings in-depth professional and academic discipline knowledge as a CIPD Fellow. Her academic work is informed by earlier experience as a senior HR professional, where she led complex organisational change across national boundaries, including acquisitions, business transformations and new entity inceptions in multinational organisations.
Research areas
Maranda’s research is grounded in social justice and focuses on how inequalities at work are produced, experienced and changed. Her principal interests span intersectionality, human resource management, global mobility, mixed-race lives and inclusive qualitative methods. Across these areas, she connects rigorous qualitative research with practical recommendations for employers, professional bodies, policy audiences and community partners.
External activity
Maranda serves as Co-Chair for the British Academy of Management (BAM) HRM Special Interest Group, and is a member of the British Academy of Management Peer Review College and a member of the editorial review board for Gender in Management.
She is Chair and Trustee of People in Harmony, a charity focused on mixed-race lives in Britain. She is also a volunteer mentor for Cara's Fellowship Programme.
She is also a Licensed Career Counsellor and Coach.
Publications
Rodriguez, J. K., Ridgway, M., Oldridge, L., & Edwards, M. (2025). Technologies of self-care in precarious neoliberal academia: Women academics’ craftwork as strategies of coping and complicity. Work, Employment and Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170241297523
Edwards, M., Ridgway, M., Chen, G., Cooper, E., & Pass, S. (2025). (In)visible Working Mama Drama: From Excellent to ‘Good Enough’ Academia and (M)Others. British Journal Of Management. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12866
Ridgway, M., Oldridge, L. & Mavin, S. (2025). 'Leading' by example? Gendered language in Human Resource job adverts. Human Resource Management Journal. https://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12549
Ridgway, M., Edwards, M. & Oldridge, L. (2024). Writing differently: finding beauty in the broken, Gender, Work & Organization. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.13125
Rodriguez, J. K., & Ridgway, M. (2023). Intersectional Reflexivity: Fieldwork experiences of ethnic minority women researchers. Gender, Work & Organization. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12977
Edwards, M., Mitchell, L., Abe, C., Cooper, E., Johansson, J. & Ridgway, M. (2022). ‘I Am Not a Gentleman Academic’: Telling Our Truths of Micro-coercive Control and Gaslighting in Business Schools Using ‘Faction’.” Gender, Work & Organization. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12905
Kougiannou, N. & Ridgway, M. (2022). How is HRM research (not) helping practice? In defence of practical implications. Human Resource Management Journal. https://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12414