Dr Matthew Sparkes joined the Department of Sociology in 2014 as a teaching associate, and he now lectures for the Social Science Research Methods Programme (SSRMP) and Cambridge Undergraduate Quantitative Methods Centre (CUQM).
Matthew’s research combines his interests in social class(ification), consumption, debt-based finance, and political economy. His previous studies have explored savings variations amongst participants of the Great British Class Survey, the role of personal credit and debt in class making and struggle, and the origins of the economic ideas of financialisation in Britain. Matthew’s current research examines classificatory discourses, models and struggles across media outlets and amongst financial institutions, and traces their affective dimensions through people’s identities, political persuasions, and life chances.
In the Department of Sociology, Matthew lectures on the Statistics and Methods (SOC5) and Social Problems in Britain (SOC12) papers, and supervises undergraduate and postgraduate students. For the SSRMP, he delivers courses in Foundations in Applied Statistics, Basic Quantitative Analysis, and Survey Research and Design, all using the software package STATA, and delivers workshops in Research Ethics. For CUQM, he runs a number of day courses in statistics using SPSS, including survey design, bivariate analysis, and regression. Furthermore, Matthew teaches for the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CiSL) delivering workshops on survey design, research design, and quantitative methods for survey research.
Matthew has a first class BA honours degree in Sociology from Leeds Metropolitan University, an MA with Distinction in Social Research and a PhD in Economic Sociology from the University of York. He is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA). Before commencing his role at Cambridge, Matthew taught sociology and research methods at the University of York, and worked as a Debt Advisor for the charity StepChange.
