Rate My Professor Matthew Allen

Matthew Allen is a Senior Lecturer in Historical Criminology in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences within the Faculty of Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and Education at the University of New England. He earned his BA (Hons) in History and PhD in History from the University of Sydney. Allen's research centers on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British world, with a particular emphasis on colonial New South Wales. His projects explore the political symbolism of alcohol consumption and regulation from 1788 to 1856, the evolution of deviance through studies of magistrates and summary justice circa 1810-1850, and secularisation amid the rise of protestant dissent in the colonial public sphere around 1820-1840. These investigations illuminate the tensions between liberal ideals and authoritarian structures during New South Wales' transformation from penal colony to responsible democracy. Supported by University Research Support and BCSS Seed Grants, his work employs quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze this pivotal historical shift.

Allen's scholarly contributions include the forthcoming monograph Drink and Democracy: Alcohol and the Political Imaginary in Colonial Australia (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2025), alongside peer-reviewed articles such as 'Convict Police and the Enforcement of British Order: Policing the Rum Economy in Early New South Wales' (Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 2020), 'Distilling Liberty: Reconsidering the Politics of Alcohol in Early New South Wales' (Australian Historical Studies, 2019), 'The Myth of the Flogging Parson: Samuel Marsden and Severity of Punishment in the Age of Reform' (Australian Historical Studies, 2017), 'The Failure of Political Temperance: The Politics of No-License in Broken Hill, 1883-1914' with Lyn Wailes (Journal of Australian Colonial History, 2019), and 'Policing a Free Society: Drunkenness and Liberty in Colonial New South Wales' (History Australia, 2015). He holds key administrative roles as History Honours Coordinator, School of HASS Honours Coordinator, Book Review Editor for the Journal of Australian Colonial History, and UNE Representative on the History Council of New South Wales. Allen teaches courses including CRIM104 Deviance, HIST310 Being Bad: Sinners, Crooks, Deviants and Psychos, HIST313 Crime, Protest and Reform in the British World, 1780-1840, and HIST554 Imagining Australia: Nation, Empire, Sovereignty. He supervises postgraduate research in the history of crime, deviance, colonial New South Wales, popular culture, Australian politics, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain.