Matthew Flinders

Professor Flinders is Professor of Politics and Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics. He is also President of the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom and a board member of the Academy of Social Sciences. Educated at Loughborough University and the University of Sheffield Matthew Flinders was appointed to a Lectureship in 2000 (Senior Lecturer 2003, Reader 2005, Professor 2009). He was Sub-Dean for Graduate Affairs during 2004-2005 and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences 2005-2006. Professor Flinders' research includes work on modes of depoliticisation; governance and public policy; legislative studies with a focus on parliamentary scrutiny of the executive and the extended state; majoritarian modification and constitutional reform; territorial and functional decentralisation; the politics of patronage and public appointments; and a set of broader issues that rotate around the theme of political disengagement.