Biography
Matthew was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow until December 2024. His research and fieldwork explore the relationship between migration, activism, and political imagination in Central Europe and the Balkans.
Matthew completed a PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews in 2021. His doctoral research explored the political legacy of nomadic pastoralism in Mauritania and Western Sahara. During his PhD, he completed visiting fellowships at Harvard’s Department of Anthropology, Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre, and the Laboratoire d’études et de Recherches Historiques at the Université de Nouakchott. Since 2014, Matthew has carried out fieldwork in Mauritania, Western Sahara, Algeria, and Morocco. His academic writing has appeared in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Current Anthropology, Nomadic Peoples, Democracy and Security, Conflict and Society, Forced Migration Review, L’Ouest Saharien, and elsewhere.
Before starting his PhD, Matthew worked for the non-profit diplomatic advisory firm Independent Diplomat in Brussels, Belgium. His reporting and essays have appeared in the London Review of Books, Los Angeles Review of Books, Jadaliyya, and elsewhere. In 2023, his book proposal based on research in the Balkans was shortlisted for the Fitzcarraldo Editions/Mahler & LeWitt Studios Essay Prize.
Selected publications
Porges, M. (2026) Pure and impure risk: Integrating and adapting to landmine danger in Western Sahara’s pasturelands, Critique of Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275X261436183
‘You like Iron Maiden?’
London Review of Books Blog | 13 Apr 2022
