Dr Matthew Allen

Dr Matthew Allen is Deputy Head of the School of Management and a Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at the University of Leicester. He brings an interdisciplinary social science background to his work, drawing on organisational and social psychology, social anthropology, and social theory. His teaching spans a wide range of topics, including managerial theory and practice, data analytics, and the role of technology, power, and leadership in contemporary organisations.

Matt began his academic career as a Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at the University of Glasgow before returning for his current role at Leicester in 2013. Prior, he completed his PhD at the University of Leicester as part of the AHRC-funded ‘Conflicts of Memory’ project, which nivestigated the mediation and commemoration of terrorist attacks in the UK.

He has held several academic leadership positions, including Director of Undergraduate Studies (2016–2019), Programme Leader for the BA Business and Management (2021–2025), and Director of the Academy of Business Education (2023–2025). He is committed to inclusive, high-quality teaching and to supporting colleagues in developing their pedagogic scholarship.

Matt served as Managing Editor of the journal Memory Studies (2012–2018) and the editorial collective for ephemera: theory & politics in organization.

Matt’s research explores memory, technology, and power in organisational settings. Drawing on theoretical resources from across various social sciences his published research has examined how interpersonal relations, conflict, and memory are mediated and contested through organisational and technological practices.

His monograph The Labour of Memory (Palgrave, 2014) introduced a distinctive political economy approach to understanding the organisation of memorial cultures. Matt’s research has been published in international journals including Organization, Theory and Psychology, and Memory Studies.

This research agenda has developed through a series of funded projects involving fieldwork with a range of groups, including survivors and bereaved relatives seeking compensation following terrorist attacks, patients in a secure psychiatric unit, public memorial commissions, and environmental activists. These studies reflect a sustained interest in how organisations shape lived experiences of grief, resistance, and subjectivity.

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:

• Principles of Management (Year 1, BA Business and Management)
• Managing Digital Technologies and Business Analytics (MSc Management)
• Power at Work (Year 3, BA Human Resource Management)

Modules that I have previously convened include:

• Consultancy Challenge (Year 2, BA Business and Management)
• Sustainable Development in Practice (Year 3, BA Business and Management)
• Management in a Global Context (MSc 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.