Dr Matthew Allen

Lecturer in Economic Anthropology

Contact details

• Email: m.allen@le.ac.uk
• Office: BRK 219
• Office Hours (Module Leader): 3pm Mondays & 11am Thursdays (via Microsoft Teams).
• Office Hours (Year Tutor): 9am Tuesdays and 12pm Fridays (via Microsoft Teams)

Background

I joined the University of Leicester School of Business as a lecturer in 2013, prior to this I was a lecturer for 2 years at the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow.

Research

My research explores user-experiences of the justice system with a particular focus on memory and technology. 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.

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 lead on the following modules: Management Inquiry and Analysis; Managing Information Technology; Consultancy Challenge; Business Simulation II; and Power at Work.

Academic Leadership

• Academic Year Tutor (Current)
• Director of Student Experience for the School of Business (2018-20)
• Director of Undergraduate Studies (2015-18)
• I serve on the editorial board of Memory Studies.

• 2017-2019: Research Lead for the Division of Innovation, Technology and Operations.