Dr Matthew Allen

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

I research the psychosocial dimensions of memory, technology and power in organisational settings. This programme comprises a series of funded projects involving fieldwork with a range of 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 organisation are mediated and contested.

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

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., (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.

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

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. (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. (2015) 'Review of: Digital memory and the archive' by Wolfgang Ernst, Media, Culture & Society. vol. 37, pp. 658-660.

Allen, M.J. (2013) 'Review of: Digital Culture and the Politics of Emotion' in Emotion, Space and Society, vol. 7, pp. 70-71.

Allen, M.J. (2011) 'Review of: Save as...Digital Memories' in Memory Studies, vol. 4(4). pp. 481-484.

I am available to supervise potential doctoral researchers in topics relating to power and technology in organisational settings, particularly using qualitative methods, and conceptually informed by continental philosophy and critical theory.

Supervision of completed doctoral research: 

• Que(e)rying Asylym: An ethnographic study of the discursive and non-discursive construction of LGBT asylum seekers in the UK Maddalena Tacchetti
• Working or Working Out? Examining the Trainer-Performer-Hobbyist Nature of Part-Time Les Mills Instructors in a Philippine Gym Bj Enverga

I am module leader on the following modules:

• Introduction to Management (Year 1, BA Business and Management)
• Managing Digital Technologies and Business Analytics (MSc Management)
• Sustainable Development in Practice (Year 3, BA Business and Management)
• Power at Work (Year 3, BA Human Resource Management)

Academic Leadership

• Director of Student Experience (2018-20).
• Director of Undergraduate Studies (2015-18).
• Editorial Collective, ephemera: theory and politics in organization (2011-2017).
• Managing Editor of Memory Studies (2012-2018).
• Department Research Lead (2017-2019).

Funded Research

• (2018-2019) Travelling Memories (Co-Investigator £50000). This qualitative study with Professor Paula Reavey (Principal Investigator) and Professor Steve Brown examines the experiences of patients living on secure psychiatric wards.
• (2012-2013) Environmental justice and ethical consumption (£4750 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.
• (2007-2011) Conflicts of Memory: Mediating and Commemorating the 2005 London Bombings (AHRC £146524) 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.