Mathew Guest

During 2021-2024, he is serving as chair of the British Sociological Association’s Religion Study Group.

Guest was lead author on the project report and his contribution to the project’s monograph Islam on Campus (2020) includes a critical analysis of the impact of the government’s counterterrorism Prevent Strategy. The launch of the project report was widely covered across the media.

Guest was a member of the cross-university academic team for the Re/presenting Islam on Campus project (2015-2018), the first national empirical study of how Islam and Muslims are perceived within UK universities.

Since 2013, this research has included the ways in which institutions contribute to the marginalisation and stigmatisation of minority identities, including Muslims. Guest is notable for his academic work on the Prevent Strategy.

Mathew Guest (born 9 February 1975) is a British sociologist and professor of sociology of religion at Durham University. Guest is the author or editor of numerous academic books, reports, journal articles and essays. His publications cover various topics in the sociology of religion, particularly evangelical Christianity in the UK, value transmission within clergy families, and the status of Christianity and Islam within university contexts.

Guest has led or co-led five major empirical projects on religion within the United Kingdom, receiving research funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Church of England and Porticus. His research has focused on the institutional framing of religion in the 21st century, with a particular focus on how Christian identities are expressed within congregations, families and the cultural contexts of higher education.