Matthew studied History & Sociology at the University of Manchester (1st) followed by an AHRC-funded MA in Cultural History (Distinction) and an AHRC-funded Ph.D in History at the same institution. In 2012, he taught at the University of Durham, before being awarded a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, which he held at the University of Victoria from 2013 to 2015.

Matthew is an historian specialising in intellectual history and the history of political thought. He has a particular interest in the development of anarchism as a political tradition, and his first book, described in the American Historical Review as an ‘innovative intellectual history of British anarchism,’ focused on the work of Peter Kropotkin and Herbert Read.

He has also co-edited a number of books including The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) with Carl Levy; Anarchism, 1914-1918: Internationalism, Anti-militarism and War(Manchester University Press, 2017) with Ruth Kinna; and three volumes of Essays in Anarchism and Religion (Stockholm University Press, 2020, 2018, 2017) with Alexandre Christoyannopoulos. He also recently contributed an introduction to a new edition of Marie Louise Berneri’s Journey through Utopia published by PM Press.  Matthew is co-editor of the journal Anarchist Studies.

Biographical details correct as of 24.04.26