Life . . .
Born in Los Angeles, California and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, Matthew’s childhood revolved around basketball, track and field, reading, and the exploration of the city on his bicycle. At Asheville High School he demonstrated an early interest in chemistry and history, but particularly enjoyed forensics and debate. His discovery of writers like W. E. B. Du Bois, Anna Julia Cooper, and Ralph Ellison—coupled with this upbringing in a majority Black neighborhood—sparked his concern for racial inequalities, identities, and interactions.
He later engaged in community service through the Bahá’í Faith in Kingston, Jamaica. There he was fortunate to sit-in on social science classes at the University of the West Indies-Mona, which were taught from varied post-colonial standpoints. His encounters with decolonial praxis would prove formative to his trajectory as a future sociologist.
Today, Matthew’s personal interests include gardening, puzzles & trivia, reading, thrifting, travel, all-things Star Wars, and ‘90s hip-hop, whereby he is an apostle of OutKast and André 3000’s words that “The South Got Something To Say.” A continuing student of the belles-lettres of the sartorial sciences, he is also a proud member of the historically Black Greek-Letter Organization, Phi Beta Sigma fraternity, Inc. Most importantly, he is the honored Mr. to Mrs. Menaka Kannan, a data analyst and mathematics teacher.
. . . Learning . . .
Matthew holds a doctorate in sociology (Virginia), master’s in religion (Harvard), master’s in cultural studies (Ohio), and bachelor’s in sociology (UNCG). While at Virginia, Matthew was a research fellow for the Center for the Study of Local Knowledge in the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies and was also an instructor across three disciplines: Sociology, Media Studies, and African American Studies. He continues to take coursework on law, religion, humanities, and the social sciences.
Ever the student of the concept of “race”, Matthew analyzes race in relation to social inequality, culture, science, religion, media, and more. He remains interested in developing a thorough scholastic comprehension of race beyond the traditional focus on identities or static ideologies. Rather, he considers how race is both a product and producer of human behavior; a co-constitutive social force of both subjective meanings and objective, asymmetrical relations of power. An avid reader who leans skeptic, Matthew continues to study how social processes and contexts produce race, imbue race with particular meanings, and constrain and enable pathways of human action and order.
. . . and Labor
A Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut, Matthew is also an affiliate faculty of the Africana Studies Institute; American Studies Program; Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, & Policy (InCHIP); Sustainable Global Cities Initiative, and; Graduate Certificate and Masters Program in Intersectional Indigeneity, Race, Ethnicity, & Politics. He has also been named an affiliate scholar at the University of Cambridge (England); Edge Hill University (England); University of Barcelona (Spain), and; Nelson Mandela University (South Africa).
He was awarded a Fulbright Scholar Fellowship at the University of Surrey (England) and has held several invited positions: Columbia University (USA); London School of Economics (England); Trinity College-Dublin (Ireland); University of the Free State (South Africa); University of Kent (England), and; University of Warwick (England).
The author of over 85 peer-reviewed scholarly articles and 9 scholarly books, Matthew was a co-founding associate editor of the American Sociological Association’s first ethnoracial-focused journal: Sociology of Race and Ethnicity and was the former editor of Sociology Compass—Race and Ethnicity. He frequently lends his scholarly voice to media, having appeared on ABC News, Al Jazeera, CNN, FOX, NBC News, NPR, New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, and others. Matthew also recurrently opines as an expert witness in racial discrimination lawsuits held in U.S. federal, state, and territory courts.