Matthew Bunn

Dr Matthew Bunn serves as an Honorary Lecturer in the College of Human and Social Futures at the University of Newcastle, Australia, where he works as a Research Fellow within the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education (CEEHE). His research focuses on understanding the structural causes of inequity in higher education, particularly examining how deeply marginalized communities become absent from equity agendas.

His research interests span equity in higher education, sociology of inequalities, social class analysis, rural and remote education, and risk-taking behavior in extreme sports. Bunn challenges conventional understandings of equity, arguing that current initiatives often focus on populations best positioned to capitalize on opportunities while ignoring deeper structural inequalities related to social class, rurality, and care-experienced individuals. His approach emphasizes connecting research with practice to develop more effective equity strategies that address root causes rather than symptoms of inequity.

Bunn's publications reveal a consistent focus on how equity initiatives can inadvertently reproduce the very inequalities they seek to address. His recent work examines temporal equity, epistemic access, and the politics of knowledge in higher education. He has made significant contributions to understanding how social-structural inequality operates beneath the surface of conventional equity metrics, particularly regarding regional, rural, and remote students, as well as care leavers.

As a supervisor, Bunn currently co-supervises a PhD project examining class struggle within higher education experiences for working-class students in the Illawarra region. His research has secured multiple grants totaling over $170,000 from various funding bodies including the Australian Department of Education and Training, Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success, and University of Newcastle internal schemes. His work demonstrates a commitment to developing practical, research-informed approaches to building more equitable higher education systems through initiatives like the Graduate Certificate of Professional Equity and Inclusion.