About Matthew Brannan

Matthew Brannan is Professor of Work, Employment and Organisation Studies and Head of School at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, a position he has held since September 2025. He leads one of the UK’s largest business schools, with responsibility for around 200 staff and 3,500 students, and oversight of education quality, research strategy, knowledge exchange, and professional accreditation (AACSB and EFMD/EQUIS).

Matthew’s research centres on sustainable employment practices, organisational culture, workplace misconduct, and work in the service economy. He has a particular reputation for ethnographic research in organisational settings, and his work has examined call centres, financial services mis-selling, employee branding, and HR management in higher education. His publications appear in Human Relations, Organization Studies, Gender, Work and Organization, the Sociological Review, and Work, Employment and Society, among others. He is the author and editor of Branded Lives: The Production and Consumption of Identity at Work (Edward Elgar, 2011) and founding editor of the Journal of Organizational Ethnography, a role he held from its launch in 2012 until 2022.

Before joining Northumbria, Matthew held senior leadership roles at Newcastle University Business School, serving as Deputy Head of School (Education and Student Recruitment) and subsequently Deputy Dean, and prior to that as Professor and Director of Research at Keele Management School. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wolverhampton.

Matthew has served on Business in the Community’s North East Leadership Board since November 2020.