Matt completed his early qualifications in South Africa, where he advanced from environmental science and philosophy to development studies and ultimately to the crossroads of environmental- and social sciences.

This precipitated in published work, funded by South Africa's National Research Foundation, which found a need for organised environmental justice and dissent toward postcolonial urban sustainability transitions.

Alongside that work, Matt led the establishment of an organisational development in the third sector which was set up to critically and constructively engage with the South African Parliament. Topical foci of his own and of researchers and liaisons in his team included finance and economy, environment, public enterprises, transport, and energy.

Subsequently, Matt advanced his PhD at the University of Cape Town into a scholarship through the UKRI funded WASTE FEW ULL project, hosted by Coventry University, whereby his thesis delivered a comparative critique of commodification in environmental governance using the case of urban waste in Bristol, Cape Town, and Rotterdam.

At the same time, Matt became the lead researcher for finance and economics in a central pool of staff serving a group of elected representatives in the Scottish Parliament. There, his work has contributed to the development of policy and the execution of parliamentary functions.

Now, Matt works as one of two postodoctoral research fellows in the ERC Start Grant - now UK Horizon Guarantee funded - SPARK project. Here, he is tasked with systematically analysing the Scottish and UK Parliaments with a focus on how parliamentary actors use knowledge of various types.