Dr Matthew Butler

Matthew joined the School of Medical Sciences as a Research Associate in February 2025. He is a member of the SAPPHIRE Research Group and specialises in research on health communication, patient safety, and healthcare improvement.

Matthew's background is in the social sciences, having completed his PhD at the University of York in 2025. He has expertise in qualitative research methods, particularly Conversation Analysis (CA). His recent work has explored communication and safety in gastrointestinal endoscopy. He is also working with colleagues in the Social and Epidemiological Psychiatry Research Group (University of Leicester) to evaluate the effectiveness of treatments for people living with treatment-resistant epilepsy.

Matthew has published and presented research through a range of outlets, including peer-reviewed journals and international conferences. His work with colleagues on safety in endoscopy (SCALE-ENDO) received an award at the 2026 Organisational Behaviour in Health Care (OBHC) Conference in Oxford. Most recently, Matthew has presented at the International Conference on Conversation Analysis (ICCA) in Canada.

• Little, S., Butler, M., Tawn, J., El-Sawy, D., Ahmar, S., Debasish, D., O’reilly, M., Kadri, S., & Farhad Peerally, M. (2026). P443 Exploring safety and adaptive capacity in gastrointestinal endoscopy teams using human factors analysis of national harm incidents and in-situ simulations. BMJ Gut, 75(Suppl 1), A347-A348. doi.org/10.1136/gutjnl-2026-BSG.548
• Little, S.; Tawn, J; El-Sawy, D.; Butler, M.; Ahmar, S.; O’Reilly, M.; Kadri, S.; Das, D.; Chilton, A.; Peerally, MF. [under review]. A human factors-based content analysis of contributory factors to patient safety incidents reported in endoscopy care across England and Wales
• Butler, M. [under review]. Pre-Emptive Topic Blockers: a novel practice for questioners to maintain progressivity of question-answer sequences, Discourse and Communication
• Neyra, R.; Butler, M.; Nicolaisen, E.M.; Sbertoli-Nielsen, P.; Tam, C.; Fox, B.A.; Raymond, C.W. (2025). "Multimodal aspect: Bodily movements and nonlexical vocalizations as turn completions", Interactional Linguistics. doi.org/10.1075/il.23010.ney

Matthew teaches on the following modules/courses: 

• MsC Quality and Safety in Healthcare
• Patient Safety and applied Human Factors 
• Introduction to discursive methods of analysis