Summary
Matt Beech is a political scientist and historian who teaches post-war British political history, government and the culture wars. He is Founding Director of the Centre for British Politics (@CBPhull) where he currently leads the following projects: Dangerous Conversations: Bridging our Cultural Divides (HEIF funded) and Conservative Governments in the Age of Brexit, 2015-2020 (Palgrave Macmillan).
Dr Beech is Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley's Institute of European Studies and the Centre for British Politics is partnered with UC Berkeley's Centre for British Studies. In Trinity Term 2021-22, he is Visiting Scholar at Regent's Park College, Oxford working in the Oxford Centre for Religion and Culture.
He is author or editor of 37 outputs on British Politics comprising books, peer-reviewed journal articles, edited volumes, special issues and book chapters. His research has been published in the BJPIR, Parliamentary Affairs, West European Politics, Public Policy & Administration, British Politics, Political Studies Review, Policy Studies, Political Quarterly and Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique.
He is Associate Member of the Centre de Recherches en Civilisation Britannique at the Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a member of the Heterodox Academy. He served two terms as an elected member of the Executive Committee of the American Political Science Association’s British Politics Group and was a Thorneycroft Memorial Scholar at the University of Southampton, where he studied for his PhD under Professor the Lord Plant of Highfield.
Dr Beech has spoken at the House of Commons, the House of Lords, the California Chamber of Commerce, the Council of State Governments - West, UC Berkeley, Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3, University of Adelaide and Hitotsubashi University. He has had written evidence published by the House of Lords Select Committee on Soft Power and the UK’s Influence and by the Committee on Standards in Public Life report into donations and funding of British political parties.
He provides expert analysis for the print media and has appeared in The Times, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Le Figaro, Les Echos, The Globe and Mail and Bloomberg News. He has worked on programmes for Sky News, BBC Parliament, BBC Radio 4, Radio France International and CNBC Asia.
Dr Beech has over a decade of experience in Knowledge Exchange including public policy consultancy. He has worked with parliamentarians, trade unionists, local government officers and broadcast journalists from Norway; think-tank professionals from Germany; Chinese provincial government officials; and with Russian higher education professionals.