George Matheson

BSocSC, PhD (UNE)

George Matheson was born in Australia in 1964 and educated at the University of New England (BSocSc 1987, PhD 1994). A lecturer at UoW since 2001, he worked in social research for about fourteen years, eleven of them (1989-2000) at the Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW.

Matheson studies and teaches methods of inquiry in the human sciences. That includes the details of techniques and procedures of all kinds. It also includes their history, theory and criticism, as well as their uses in making policy or otherwise organizing social life. He notes that being a methodologist has its good and bad points. On the one hand, you do end up third- or fourth-named author more often than not, and in an acknowledgment footnote more often still. Then again, life is never dull. You get to look at a lot of things. Here are some examples:

• G. Matheson (1999) Carry your gods and your kings along: A sociological theory of the Millennium. Proceedings of TASA ’99: Sociology for a New Millennium

• G. Matheson and M. Wearing (1999) Within and without: Labour force status and political views in four welfare states, in S. Svallfors and P. Taylor-Gooby (eds), The End of the Welfare State? Responses to State Retrenchment. London and New York: Routledge/European Sociological Association

• M. Bittman, G. Meagher and G. Matheson (1999) The changing boundary between home and market: Australian trends in outsourcing domestic labour. Work, Employment and Society 13(2): 249-273

• G. Matheson (1997) Universality, selectivity and public attitudes towards income support for the aged, in S. Shaver, Universality and Selectivity in Income Support: An Assessment of the Issues. Aldershot: Ashgate

• M. Fine, S. Graham and G. Matheson (1995) The Institutional Population of Australia: 1976-1991. Report of a Feasibility Study. SPRC Reports and Proceedings No. 119, February

• P. Saunders, B. Halleröd and G. Matheson (1994) Making ends meet in Australia and Sweden: A comparative analysis using the subjective poverty line methodology. Acta Sociologica 37(1): 3-22

Searchable RIS publications from 2000 to date

At Wollongong, he usually teaches social science research methods, program evaluation and/or social policy. In 2003, he is also offering a general interest subject in the historical sociology of civilization, violence and the state. Please see the Calendar for details. If you are thinking of doing postgraduate study in any of these areas, George would be happy to hear from you.

For whatever else you wish to know about George Matheson’s attributes and behaviours, please contact:

Email: gmath@uow.edu.au
Phone: (02) 4221 3743