Dr Matthew Allen

Lecturer in Economic Anthropology

Contact details

• Email: m.allen@le.ac.uk
• Social media: Facebook // Twitter
• Office: Room 311, Level 3, Ken Edwards Building
• Office hours: Out-of-term by appointment

Research

My research explores user experiences of the justice system with a particular focus on memory. This has comprised a series of funded projects involving fieldwork with a range of user groups including survivors and bereaved relatives seeking compensation after terrorist attacks, patients of a secure psychiatric unit, memorial commissions and environmental activists. I draw theoretically from across the social sciences to explain how, in a variety of contexts, memory and justice are mediated and contested. I am editor of Memory Studies and lead coordinator of the Digital Memory SIG for the Memory Studies Association.

Recent Publications

Allen, M. (2019) 'Media, witnessing and intersubjectivity after the 2005 London bombings', Ethnologie Française, Vol. 173(1), pp. 131-139.

Chatzidakis, A., Shaw, D., and Allen, M. (2018) 'A psycho-social approach to consumer ethics', Journal of Consumer Culture.

Allen, M. (2017) 'Memory in Technoscience: The wettability of mnemonic relations', in Hoskins, A. (Ed.) Digital Memory Studies: Media Pasts in Transition. Routledge: London.

Allen, M.J. and Brown, S.D. (2016) 'Undecided life: Standards, subjects, and sovereignty in compensating victims of the war on terror', Theory & Psychology, Vol. 26(2), pp. 263-283.

Allen, M.J. and Brown, S.D. (2016) 'Memorial Meshwork: The making of the commemorative space of the Hyde Park 7/7 Memorial', Organization, Vol. 23(1), pp. 10-28.

Allen, M.J., (2016) 'The poverty of memory: For political economy in memory studies', Memory Studies, Vol. 9(4), pp 371-375.

Allen, M.J. (2015) The labour of memory: Memorial culture and 7/7 London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Research Funding

Travelling Memories (Co-Investigator, £50,000). This qualitative study, with Professor Paula Reavey (Principal Investigator) and Professor Steve Brown, examines the experiences of patients living on secure psychiatric wards.

Environmental justice and ethical consumption (£4,750 University of Glasgow seedcorn funding). This project, with Professor Deirdre Shaw, adopted visual methods to gain insight into psychosocial aspects of ethical decision-making amongst environmental activists.

Conflicts of Memory: Mediating and Commemorating the 2005 London Bombings (AHRC, £146,524) The project team assembled and mined a diverse and complex corpus of objects, actions, places, events, people and a range of medial representations enabling the tracking and analysis of individual and collective 'trajectories' of rememberings of the 2005 London bombings.

Teaching

I am module leader on the first and final-year undergraduate modules: MN1009 Management Inquiry and Analysis, MN1024 Managing Information Technology and MN3111 Power at Work.

Administrative Duties

• Director of Undergraduate Studies for the School of Business.
• Research Lead for the Division of Innovation, Technology and Operations.