Matthew’s areas of research and teaching cluster around social justice and institutional prejudice (particularly on the basis of class, race, and homophobia, biphobia, or transphobia), youth voice and creative practice, inclusion, social policy and special educational needs. Having joined the Department in September 2008, he has taught across all programmes in the department.
Matthew’s approach to research and teaching is collaborative, intersectional and participant-led, and includes projects on decolonising the university; valuing the expertise of PoC in HE; Black girls’ survival, agency, and resilience; transgender children’s experiences in healthcare; and LGBTQ-inclusive education in primary schools serving faith communities. He has published several articles and books, including (with Elly Barnes) 'How to Transform Your School Into an LGBT+ Friendly Place: A Practical Guide for Nursery, Primary and Secondary Teachers' London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Before working at Goldsmiths, Matthew was a youth worker, and then did a law degree. He later studied at Mills College in Oakland, California for a PGCE equivalent in Secondary English and Humanities, and then another in working with pupils with Mild to Moderate Disabilities at St Mary's College, Oakland. Matthew has taught and written curriculum for children and young people with Asperger's and Tourette's Syndromes and those labelled as having 'behaviour disorders', students with mental health diagnoses, and young people who have been in the criminal justice system. Matthew also worked in a multi-agency team within an urban local authority to support young people who had been permanently excluded from school back into mainstream education. He is a qualified mediator and has initiated conflict resolution programmes in schools.
Matthew is a member of the Department’s Centre for Identity and Social Justice.
9/06-3/11 Department of Educational Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London
PhD: ‘Permanent Exclusion and Institutional prejudice: Critical bureaucracy as a route to inclusion’
Ethnographic research within a local authority about the causes and effects of permanent exclusion from school on pupils, families and professionals, focussed on aspects of multi-agency working and inter-professional conflict, gendered, ‘classed’ and ‘raced’ discourses, and the relationship between policy and practice.
9/03-6/05 Holy Names University, Oakland, California
Post-graduate Diploma in Education: Education Specialist, Mild-Moderate Disabilities; California Teaching Credential (Part Time)
9/02-6/03 Mills College, Oakland, California
Post-graduate Diploma in Education: Secondary English with CLAD (Culture, Language and Diversity) Certification; California Teaching Credential
9/99-6/02 South Bank University, London
Llb (Bachelor of Law): First Class (Honours)
9/98-6/99 Lambeth College, London
Central Counselling and Psychotherapy Body (CCPAB) Certificate in Counselling
9/97-6/98 Morley College, London
Access Course: Anthropology and Social Policy, London Open College Federation
Teaching
Matthew has taught on MA and undergraduate modules focused on community learning, special educational needs, inclusion and exclusion, and research methods.
PhD supervision
Matthew supervises PhDs on a range of topics including:
institutional racism
educational policy
school exclusion
LGBTQ+ inclusion in schools
transgender children and adolescents
parenting
PhD supervision
Sadia Habib: Teaching and Learning Britishness (completed 2017)
This PhD on teaching Britishness and ‘British Values’ functioned partially as a mediation on recent policy requirements placed on educational institutions. The literature shows that Britishness is fluid, evolving and often difficult to define for White British and ethnic minority youth, so this work raised theoretical and pedagogical concerns about how best to respond to these political initiatives. The work took an ethnographic arts-based approach, and addressed (i) the complexities of teaching and learning Britishness and (ii) young people’s discourses of Britishness and belonging. By examining the pedagogies employed by two Art classes in a southeast London school, the research aimed to address the implications of Britishness exploration on young people’s relationship with multicultural Britain.
This PhD research has been published in a book: Habib, Sadia (2017) Learning and teaching British values: policies and perspectives on British identities Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Nature.
Allison Zionts: A critical appraisal of the inclusion of LGBT+ pupils within single-sex schools in the United Kingdom.
Zora Laattoe: The edge of the mainstream: the relationship between students at risk of exclusion in mainstream secondary academies and the ‘systems’ in which they are located.
Cal Horton: Cisnormativity and the rights, equality and wellbeing of transgender children.
Professional projects
Matthew's research has been around the effects of permanent exclusion from school on young people, families and professionals, and more recently, through the Illuminate Student Researcher Project and the Illuminate Community Researchers Project. This work seeks to develop a deep model of youth voice and embed it meaningfully into school and community provision and governance.
As an external evaluator for the charity Educate & Celebrate, Matthew has undertaken extensive research into embedding LGBTQI+ issues across school policy, curriculum, and environment, in line with the Equality Act. This work was funded by the DfE and Government Equalities Office and has featured in a NatCen government report.
Matthew’s work in this area looks at school change in particularly intersectional environments. Further projects emerging from this have included a book for schools (Barnes, E. and Carlile, A 'How to Transform Your School into an LGBT+ Friendly Place A Practical Guide for Nursery, Primary and Secondary Teachers' London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers); an academic monograph with Carrie Paechter about LGBTQI+ parented families and schools, and work on LGBTQI+ issues in faith schools and faith communities.
As Student Participant Researcher coordinator on the Paul Hamlyn- funded Critical Connections I and II projects, Matthew facilitated the youth voice element of a large, international Multilingual Digital Storytelling Project.
Matthew’s work seeks to address issues of institutional prejudice on the basis of race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class, and is fundamentally designed as a collaboration with school professionals, community organisations, and young people. He is interested in the potential for such collaborations in terms of innovating to directly impact fair access to education and better outcomes for all involved.
