Madeleine (Petzer) Stevens is a Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management at Liverpool John Moores University.  Prior to joining academia, Dr. Stevens worked as an HR practitioner for over 20 years, having worked in South-Africa, England, Channel Islands and France.

Dr. Stevens was Divisional HR Business Partner and Head of HR Zone North Europe  where she had responsibility for 8 countries in Europe in Siemens before taking the reigns as HR Director at City Fibre in London.

She has also worked as HR policy and projects manager in Dubai Ports World, Southampton and HR Manager and Learning and Development Manager in various hotels internationally. 

Dr. Stevens received her PhD from Solent University, Southampton in 2019 with her thesis focussing on; ‘Developing effective interventions for mitigating the psychological impact experienced by redundancy envoys during redundancy situations’.  She holds a Master’s degree (merit) in Personnel and Development from Solent University, focussing on Occupational Stress after studying Industrial, Applied and Developmental psychology in South-Africa (distinction).

She  is a Fellow member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (FCIPD), Higher Education Academy  (FHEA) and Paralegal Society (Specialist Employment Law).  She is also a Chartered member of the British Psychological Society. 

In 2021, Dr. Stevens received the distinguished  ‘Innovative Teaching Award’ from the HR Division of the Academy of Management and ‘Rising Star Award’ from the Liverpool Business School. She was a finalist for ‘Excellence in Learning and Development’  from the Association of Business Psychologist’s  Workforce Experience Awards 2020. 

In 2014 she won ‘Outstanding student achievement’ and ‘Excellence in Employee wellbeing’ at the Association of Business Psychologist’s Workforce Experience Awards for her PhD research in mitigating the negative impact of implementing redundancies and was finalist in the categories of ‘Excellence in Change management’ and ‘Employee engagement’.   She won ‘Best HR professional leading strategic and operational change’ in 2013 through Bond Williams / CIPD. Her first recognition in HR commenced in South-Africa, where she designed a bespoke training programme for the 5 star, Relais and Chateau Property, Hunters Country House Hotel in Plettenberg Bay that lead to the recognition of  ‘Best Fine Dining Restaurant in 2002’. 

Dr. Stevens research passion is about mitigating the negative impact of redundancies for individuals and implementing redundancies successfully for organisations. She has published various articles for the CIPD on redundancy implementation.