Dr Matthew Charles
I am a Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Critical Theory in the School of Humanities, having joined the University of Westminster in 2010. I have a BA and an MA in Philosophy and Literature from the University of Warwick and a PhD from the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), then at Middlesex University.
I teach on undergraduate and postgraduate modules on literary studies, cultural studies and critical theory.
My office is room 509 on the fifth floor of the main building at 309 Regent Street and the phone extension for my office is 68922.
My research primarily concerns the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, specifically the work of Walter Benjamin.
In relation to philosophy and literature I have published Modernism Between Benjamin and Goethe (Routledge 2019) and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2015, revised 2020) entry on Walter Benjamin.
I contributed the chapter on critical theory and education in The Palgrave Walter Benjamin Handbook (Palgrave, 2025) and The Sage Handbook of Frankfurt School Critical Theory (Sage, 2018) and have published on Walter Benjamin and education in Pedagogies of Disaster (Punctum 2013), New German Critique, boundary 2, Radical Philosophy, Studies in Philosophy and Education and Pedagogy, Culture and Society. I also co-edited with Howard Eiland the dossier on 'Walter Benjamin and Education' for boundary 2 (2018) and organized and contributed to the panel on 'Pedagogization' for the Radical Philosophy 2015 conference in Berlin, the international conference on 'Walter Benjamin, Pedagogy and the Politics of Youth' (IMCC/CRMEP 2013), and the streams on 'Critical Theory and Education' for the International Critical Theory Conference of Rome and on 'Critical Education and Radical Pedagogy' and for the London Conference in Critical Thought in 2012.
I have supervised to completion doctoral research on modernist literature and philosophy, I have externally examined PhDs on Walter Benjamin and the collective body at the University of Nottingham, on Walter Benjamin's philosophy at the University of Kingston, and on literature and the abject at the University of Winchester. I have been internal examiner for several PhDs on Walter Benjamin at the University of Westminster.
I welcome PhD applications from students wishing to pursue graduate research on critical theory, modernist literature or theoretical aspects of modern and contemporary education.