Publisher's Synopsis
A Memoir of Job Loss, Leadership, and Rebuilding After Redundancy
This book is for anyone navigating institutional upheaval-whether you've been laid off, silenced, or left questioning your place in a system that no longer sees you. It speaks to academics, leaders, and everyday readers facing change not by choice, but by circumstance-offering a mirror, a map, and a quiet kind of courage.With lyrical reflection and grounded truth, this memoir explores what it means to lose your role-but not your voice.
This book may show how some beauty dares to emerge during the storm.
In 2025, amid sweeping job cuts at UK universities, one academic stood at the edge of a collapsing system-
where silence meant survival,
leadership demanded compliance,
and speaking truth was the riskiest choice of all.
Told through intimate diary entries, poetic reflections, and sharp, insightful narrative, "They Fired Me, I Rehired Myself" chronicles an academic leader's journey through institutional betrayal, professional erasure, and personal renewal.
More than just a story of survival, this book explores resilience, quiet courage, and the emotional toll of being erased by the very system you helped build. With honesty, clarity, and occasional humour, it captures the reality of academic leadership, the subtle cruelty of fire-and-rehire, and the fierce tenderness required to keep going.
Whether you're a leader in crisis, an academic at a crossroads, or someone seeking meaning after loss, this book offers not just comfort-but language, clarity, and tools for reclaiming your voice.
If The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins shows you how to release what you can't control, this book offers what comes next: a lived reckoning with what remains-truth, integrity, identity-and the work of rebuilding in real time.
Step into this story of turning crisis into clarity, silence into strength, and endings into renewed purpose. Your next chapter starts here.
