Dr Matt Badcock

About Dr Matt Badcock

Matt is the Head of Sociology at Leeds Beckett University and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. His teaching and research interests are in data visualisation, mobilities and public sociology.

Matt completed his PhD on the process of democratisation and political modernisation in Britain in the Department of Geography at the University of Leicester. Prior to Leeds Beckett he was Course Director for Sociology at Birmingham City University; during which time he established the first degree in the UK focused on public sociology. His teaching and research focuses on data visualisation and mobilities and public sociology.

Current Teaching

Matt leads the level 5 modules Visualising Urban Inequalities and Exploring Social Research and the level 6 Sociology Dissertation module.

Research Interests

Matt's research interests are in data visualisation and mobilities – that is, the movement of people and things, as well as the broader social implications of those movements. He is particularly interested in how data originally produced for another purpose can be captured, reused and visualised in ways help us understand how society is changing. His current research uses airline and airport passenger data to look at how and why people are moving around the European Union and how this has changed over time.