LAUSR

Roger Matthews, one of the influential group of “Left Realists” and a leading contributor to several areas of study in critical criminology, died on April 7, 2020. Over the years, Roger had faced and fought various periods of illness but was unable to recover from COVID-19. Roger was born in 1948 into a working-class family in North London and never forgot his roots. While not academically inclined at school, he later flourished as a student, first at Middlesex Polytechnic (now Middlesex University), where he earned a degree in Social Science, following this with a Masters from the University of Sussex, and a PhD on the subject of prostitution from the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex. It was at Sussex that, as his former colleague John Lea recalls, he studied critical theory and encountered the “realist” philosophy of Roy Bhaskar, which he sought to incorporate into his book on Realist Criminology (2014). This intellectual background is important, being broad and sociological: Roger was never a narrow criminologist. Nor was he insular or fixed in his views, although famously, he enjoyed hearing the perspectives of others with whom he disagreed, so that he could engage in a good debate. As his former student, John Pitts (later Professor of Criminology, University of Bedfordshire), puts it, “Roger enjoyed an argument and didn’t mind antagonising people who didn’t agree with him. He inspired admiration in those who knew his work and love in those who knew him.” Jayne Mooney, now a Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, but a one-time graduate student and Lecturer at Middlesex, remembers Roger’s support throughout her PhD research on domestic abuse and kind encouragement when she gave her first ever lecture to one of his classes. Jayne also recalls that for Jock Young, Roger was someone who was always “bloody good fun”—even if they did often disagree. Roger spent much of his career at Middlesex (1977–2004), rising from Lecturer to Professor, with a secondment at Leicester University along the way. At Middlesex, he was one