Matthew Beaumont

Matthew Beaumont is Professor of English Literature at University College London's Department of English Language and Literature, where he has taught since 2005. He also serves as Co-Director of UCL's Urban Lab, leading its Cities Imaginaries research strand. Beaumont earned his BA (1994), MSt (1996), and DPhil (2000) in English from the University of Oxford, preceded by research and teaching fellowships at Keble College and Pembroke College, Oxford.

His research explores the intersections of literature, urban experience, and embodied politics. Primary domains include:

• Mechanics, poetics, and politics of walking
• Metropolitan cities (especially London) in literature
• Insomnia in 19th-20th century arts and philosophy
• Marxist/cultural theory and avant-garde movements
• Politics of the body in colonial/racial capitalism

Beaumont's publications demonstrate sustained engagement with urban imaginaries, philosophical investigations of sleeplessness, and decolonial bodily politics. Recent books analyze Lev Shestov's existential philosophy (2020) and Frantz Fanon's theories of embodiment (2024). His current projects include a literary history of London for Cambridge University Press.

He maintains an interdisciplinary research profile through UCL Urban Lab, examining urban representation across literature, film, and architecture. No awards, grants, or supervised students are mentioned in available materials.