Role
Ofelia Palermo, PhD, PFHEA, is an Associate Professor of Relational Leadership and Deputy Head of International at Nottingham Business School. As a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, she contributes to the School and University’s international strategy through strategic leadership in transnational education, international partnerships, responsible management education and sustainable pedagogical innovation.
Career overview
Ofelia has over 20 years of professional experience in the Higher Education sector in the UK, US, and Europe. She holds a PhD in Organisational Behaviour (Loughborough University UK) and a Research Doctorate in Management of Public Sector Organisations (Università degli Studi della Calabria, Italy). Ofelia is dedicated to fostering global connections, engaging in responsible research, and driving sustainable pedagogical innovation. She actively promotes sustainable practices in education and advocates for inclusivity, diversity, and equality.
Her expertise in Internationalisation ranges across the strategic, tactical and operational levels reflecting into extensive knowledge of comparative international academic standards and quality assurance, international accreditations, international dual degree programme design, and establishment, development and management of overseas Academia - Industry partnerships.
She has successfully established and leads consortia that bring together Universities in the USA, South America, Europe and Taiwan. Ofelia’s work in internationalisation includes innovation in Collaborative Online International Learning activities. She initiated the Global Learning Experience Plus (COIL with an experiential component) which was recognised by the United Nations Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) as a case of best practice of Partnership for the Goals (SDG17).
Winner of the Vice-Chancellor Award for Inspirational Teaching and active member of the Trent Institute for Learning and Teaching (TILT), Ofelia is a visiting scholar in a few highly ranked Universities - ISCTE Business School in Portugal, Università degli Studi di Brescia and Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano in Italy, KEDGE Business School in Marseille and ESC Clermont in France, and ICESI University in Colombia - where she contributes with classes on Cross-Cultural Management and Organisational Communication.
Research areas
Ofelia researches relational leadership and leaderful practice. Her work centres on whose knowledge is recognised when decisions are made, and on how those in authority can act responsibly when their understanding of other people’s work is necessarily incomplete. The same questions run through her research on workplaces, corporate sustainability and international management education.
Leadership, language and professional identity
Ofelia studies how the way people talk about work gives some views more authority than others. In public services, her research on fear and resistance shows how employees defend professional commitments they believe are at risk. Through the idea of ‘unknowing’ leadership, she examines how leaders can invite, challenge, and revise their judgement.
Relational leadership and sustainability strategy
Ofelia’s sustainability research traces how knowledge held across a firm finds its way into strategy. Her work on leaderful strategy shows how small businesses can set direction collectively, drawing on the everyday relationships through which staff seek advice, share expertise and take responsibility. Further studies address employee engagement in corporate social responsibility and the role of digital systems in sustainability and ESG reporting.
Transnational education and innovative pedagogy
Ofelia has worked in transnational education for more than twenty years and co-developed NTU’s framework for master’s-level dual awards. Her research in this field asks what it means to learn across universities. Partners may agree that two curricula are equivalent while students still meet different expectations about what counts as knowledge and how they can contribute. She examines what partner institutions owe students in that situation, and the academic judgement involved in sustaining a partnership. In her pedagogic research, she develops leaderful, experiential approaches to responsible management education in which students build knowledge together and justify their decisions to those affected. These include collaborative online international learning (COIL), consultancy work with industry partners and AI-supported projects in which students create their own digital artefacts.
External activity
Ofelia’s work on international consultancies is in collaboration with Chambers of Commerce and companies based in Italy, Portugal, the US, Colombia, Greece, and France.
She is regularly asked by international Higher Education institution to provide advice on comparative international academic standards and quality assurance in Overseas – UK partnerships, with particular emphasis on dual degrees and establishment of international partner consortia.
Ofelia’s key external research collaborations are with the Organisation Theory and Organizational Behaviour group at ISCTE-IUL (PT), with the Università degli Studi di Brescia (IT), with Università Cattolica di Milano (IT), and with DePaul University in Chicago (USA).
Ofelia holds the role of Director of the Woodsend Wharf Management Company Ltd.
Sponsors and collaborators
Ofelia works closely with Units and colleagues at:
- KEDGE Business School (FR)
- Università degli Studi di Brescia (IT)
- Università Cattolica di Milano (IT)
- DePaul University in Chicago (USA)
- ISCTE-IUL in Lisbon (PT)
- Clermont SB (FR)
- ICESI (CO)
- National Sun Yat Sen University (TW)
Ofelia’s adoption of a leaderful practice outlook can act as a key action enabler on underpinning paradigms, attitudes and behaviours, and agile pedagogical approaches. With her work Global Learning Experience Plus Ofelia demonstrates how partnerships between institutions that strive to integrate SDGs experiential learning international initiatives into Higher Education curricula have a generative power that goes beyond mere curriculum design. Her recognised work with PRME provides a context for accelerating the construction of a collective social responsibility ethos among students from different countries, institutions, and academic backgrounds.
