Dr Matthew Collins

Profile

Dr Matthew Collins is a researcher and former Civil Servant working at the intersection of politics, public administration, and public policy.  He is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology, Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London, and holds a doctorate in Social and Public Policy from Cardiff University.

Matthew’s research examines the relationship between ministers and the Civil Service: the expertise each brings to the policy process, how that expertise is developed, and its consequences for policy outcomes. A parallel strand of his work considers the changing nature of trust and accountability, and the mechanisms by which Parliament and the public hold the executive to account. Matt's published works build outward from this agenda, examining the empirical, conceptual, and institutional dimensions of policy capacity, professional standards, and civil service culture; a recurring theme across this body of work is the extent to which judgements of competence and capability within the Civil Service are shaped by class and cultural background rather than by neutral assessment of skill. His research has appeared across leading public administration journals, and he has become a consistent presenter at academic conferences in the field, including the PSA and UKAPA.

Matthew is currently writing a monograph for Palgrave Macmillan's Understanding Governance series, offering the first foundational account of individual policy capacity for UK Civil Servants. The book will set out a typology of the knowledge, skills, experience, and dispositions that underpin effective policy advice, and argue that character and disposition, long treated as secondary to technical expertise, in fact carry the greater weight in ministerial judgements of competence. In doing so, it will offer Civil Servants, ministers, and scholars alike a framework for understanding what capacity in policy work actually requires, and why current professional standards fall short of capturing it; written for practitioner and academic audiences alike, it is intended to be a reference point for both communities.

Before moving into academic research, Matthew built a decade-long career in the UK Civil Service, latterly as Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for Operational Policy at the Ministry of Defence’s Permanent Joint Headquarters. There, he served as lead policy architect for the UK's 2025 Carrier Strike Group deployment. Matthew formerly held deployed policy adviser roles across multiple operational theatres, including Somalia and Djibouti, the North Atlantic and Indo-Pacific (Carrier Strike), and Eastern Europe as adviser to the Land Component Commander of NATO's Allied Reaction Force. He led a two-year bilateral treaty negotiation with the Russian Federation on the prevention of incidents at sea, coordinated the UK's humanitarian response to Caribbean hurricane seasons, and led the planning and delivery of a defence ministerial summit in Oslo. More broadly, he has held wider leadership, transformation, and private office roles. Earlier roles spanned the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Department for Education, and the Department for Work and Pensions.

Alongside his research, Matthew has taught at postgraduate and undergraduate level, having held teaching posts at Cardiff University, the University of Birmingham, and the University of Portsmouth. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Matthew is available for freelance consultancy and advisory work.

Research