Matthew is a Principal Lecturer in Psychology and Chartered Psychologist. His research has focused on the role of natural environments in mental health and wellbeing; our relationships with animals and the natural world; and how we experience and make sense of climate and ecological crisis. He works with a range of qualitative and arts-based research methods, including visual and comics-based research. 

Matthew supervises PhD students addressing a range of topics including human-animal relations, more-than-human and multispecies methods, Anthropocene studies, the posthumanities, psychology and the climate crisis, climate activism, mental health and distress, social and cultural identity. He is especially interested in supervising students adopting qualitative and creative methods. Interdisciplinary projects are especially welcome. 

Matthew's specialist teaching areas are social and environmental psychology, ecopsychology, the psychology of human-animal relations, mental health and distress.

Matthew is the author of the books Anthropocene Psychology: Being Human in a More-Than-Human World (2020), Ecological Crisis, Sustainability & the Psychosocial Subject: Beyond Behaviour Change (2016) and Self & Social Change (2008). He has also written numerous academic articles, book chapters commentary pieces and reports. Recent examples include:

Adams, M. and Jordan, M. (2026) Growing together: Nature connectedness, belonging and social identity in a mental health ecotherapy programme. In J. Hinds, H. Marshall and M. Jordan (eds.) Ecotherapy: Theory, research and practice (2nd edition). Bloomsbury, pp.122-135. 

Adams, M. (2025) Environment: Critical Social Psychology in the Anthropocene. In: Gough, B. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Social Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 681-700.

Adams, M. (2025) Centring Animals in the History of Experimental Psychology: Pavlov and the Kingdom of Dogs. Slavonic and East European Review, 103 (1): 64-92.

Adams, M. (2025) Qualitative methods in psychology after the animal turn: human-animal and multi-species relations. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 22(1),1-14.

Adams, M. (2025) Arts-based research, animal studies and Pavlov’s dogs: making the familiar strange in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 22(1), 135–167.

Adams, M. (2024) Anthropocentrism, animism and the Anthropocene: Decentering the human in Psychology. In S. Bednarek (ed.) Climate, Psychology and Change: Reimagining psychotherapy in an era of global disruption and climate anxiety. North Atlantic Books, pp. 109-122.

Adams, M. (2021). Critical psychologies and climate change. Current Opinion in Psychology, 42, 13-18.

For a complete list of publications see full research profile.

From October 2022 - October 2024 Matthew was awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Research, Development and Engagement Fellowship, titled 'Pavlov and the kingdom of dogs: Storying experimental animal histories through arts-based research'. The Fellowship involved the collaborative development of creative, arts-based and visual methods to challenge conventional perceptions of animal experimentation, the nature of scientific work, and the history of Psychology.