Dr Matthew Wood
PhD, FRSA
Department of Politics and International Relations
Senior Lecturer
Full contact details
Department of Politics and International Relations
Elmfield Building
Northumberland Road
Sheffield
S10 2TU
- Profile
-
Matthew Wood is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations. His first book, Hyper-active Governance (Cambridge University Press), explores how political economy can help explain different approaches governments use to using expertise within policy-making. It advocates an inclusive approach, integrating expertise within democratic governance. Matt is interested in how state institutions seek legitimacy, and how this is disrupted by different forms of political distrust. Matt is currently researching the politics of urban air pollution governance with Sheffield Air.
Matthew’s research is driven by a concern for how political and economic elites can critically reflect on and address legitimacy deficits by changing how they interact with the public. Working out how to do this requires multiple methods, and Matthew’s work moves between bottom-up ethnographic analysis of marginalised urban communities, and co-produced surveys and interviews with elite government agencies.
- Qualifications
-
PhD in Politics, University of Sheffield, 2014.
- Research interests
-
My current research interests include the politics of Brexit and its impact on political legitimacy in European governance; the role of technology and algorithms in managing governance problems, particularly in global urban cities. I am especially keen to supervise students interested in these themes in the fields of health and environmental governance.
- Publications
-
Journal articles
- Impact on the NHS and health of the UK's trade and cooperation relationship with the EU, and beyond. Health Economics, Policy and Law.
- Public sector accountability styles in Europe comparing accountability and control of agencies in the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and the UK. Public Policy and Administration.
- Understanding democratic stress. Representation, 58(1), 1-12.
- Enacting accountability under populist pressures: theorizing the relationship between anti-elite rhetoric and public accountability. Administration and Society, 54(2), 311-334. View this article in WRRO
- The political ideas underpinning political distrust: analysing four types of anti-politics. Representation.
- Conflictual accountability: behavioral responses to conflictual accountability of agencies. Administration and Society. View this article in WRRO
- What Do “Left Behind Communities” Want? A Qualitative Study in the United Kingdom using Photo Elicitation. American Political Science Review, 1-15.
Chapters
- Fourth Industrial Revolution and algorithms: new challenges for policy design, Research Handbook of Policy Design (pp. 194-211). Edward Elgar Publishing
Preprints
- Impact on the NHS and health of the UK's trade and cooperation relationship with the EU, and beyond. Health Economics, Policy and Law.
- Grants
-
PI, ESRC Future Leaders Fellow, 2015-18; CI, ESRC Health Governance After Brexit: Law, Language and Legitimacy.
- Teaching interests
-
My teaching proceeds from the idea that students are becoming young researchers and should hence learn the logic and process of doing research in Politics. All of my modules are structured like mini-research projects, that proceed from conceptual and theoretical discussions, to debating methods and methogology, and then researching and analysing data. I have been nominated twice for prizes in the Students Union teaching awards.
- Teaching activities
-
Level 3: Anti-politics and Democratic Crisis; MA: Democratic Governance in the Twenty-first Century.
- Professional activities and memberships
-
Trustee of the UK Political Studies Association, 2017-18.
- Supervisions
Hasrul Hanif 2017-present.