Dr Matthew Ryan

Policy Director

Matthew Ryan is Policy Director for the Web Science Institute and Associate Professor in Governance and Public Policy.

My research on democratic innovations tries to figure out how people can have control over the decisions that affect their lives.

I first came to Southampton in 2008 and began doctoral research as a Social Sciences PhD Fellow in 2009. I joined PAIR staff in September 2012. My teaching reflects my research interests, crossing the boundaries between political theory and comparative politics, with a strong focus on innovative research methods. I am co-director of the Centre for Democratic Futures and since January 2020 I have been UKRI Future Leader Fellow leading the Rebooting Democracy project.

Qualifications

PhD Politics (Southampton)
MSc Citizenship and Democracy (Southampton)
BSc Government and Public Policy (Cork)

Research

Publications

Contact

Research interests

I am motivated by a desire to understand how people can have more power over important decisions affecting their lives. My research asks how and when citizens can, should, and will take part in collective decisions. I am particularly interested in citizen participation in implementation and monitoring of political decisions, as well as in policy formulation. This has led me to further inquire as to what methods of analysis and forms of expertise best provide answers to wicked collective problems, and how we can redesign institutions to improve our experience and understanding of politics. The majority of my work engages directly in collaboration with stakeholders from government and civil society and I have worked with various government departments and agencies in the UK and abroad, local councils and associations, and networks of public participation practitioners. My peer-reviewed publications can be found in journals such as European Journal of Political Research, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Politics, PS: Political Science and Politics, Local Government Studies, Political Studies Review, Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing, and Revista Internacional de Sociologia, as well is in book chapters with Palgrave, Policy Press, Edward Elgar and ECPR Press (visit the publications tab on this page for more information).

Current projects

Calibrating and Piloting a Toolkit of Indicators for Measuring Regional Policies on Access to Medicines in
South America (with Pia Riggirozzi and Ana Amaya)
Comparative analysis of Democratic innovation (with Participedia.net)
Exploring the Philosophy of Comparative Method.
Southampton People’s Panel, Open Data and Citizen Science (With Southampton City Council and the
Web Sciences Institute)
Poverty in the South (With John Boswell, John Denham, Anna Killick, Beata Rek, Jamie Furlong, Jesse Shipp
and Patricia Ndugga)
The Fighting Citizen (With Max Halupka and Mike Jensen)
Rebooting Democracy: Democratic Innovation for the Information Age

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Articles

Book

Ryan, M. (Accepted/In press). Why citizen participation succeeds or fails: a comparative analysis of participatory budgeting. Bristol University Press.

Book Chapters

Ryan, M. (2019). Comparative approaches to the study of democratic innovation. In S. Elstub, & O. Escobar (Eds.), Handbook of Democratic Innovations and Governance (pp. 558-570). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Ryan, M. (2018). The Comparative Method. In V. Lowndes, D. Marsh, & G. Stoker (Eds.), Theory and Methods in Political Science (4th ed.). (Political Analysis). Palgrave Macmillan.
Ryan, M. (2016). Qualitative comparative analysis for reviewing evidence and making decisions. In G. Stoker, & M. Evans (Eds.), Evidence-based policy making in the social sciences: Methods that Matter (pp. 83-101). Policy Press.
Ryan, M., & Smith, G. (2014). Defining mini-publics. In K. Gronlund, A. Bachtiger, & M. Setala (Eds.), Deliberative Mini-publics: Involving Citizens in the Democratic Process (pp. 9-26). ECPR Press.

Conference

Al-Barrak, K., Carr, L., & Ryan, M. (2016). Towards a model for monitoring public services projects in Saudi Arabia. In ECISM conference proceedings (pp. 1-11). Academic Conferences and Publishing International.

Thesis

Ryan, M. (2014). Advancing comparison of democratic innovations: a medium-N fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis of participatory budgeting.

Dr Matthew Ryan
Web Science Institute
Building 32, Room 3041, Level 3
University of Southampton
Highfield Campus
Southampton
Hampshire, SO17 1BJ
United Kingdom

Room Number: 58/3087

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