Mathias is a doctoral candidate studying the spatial impacts of gender and sex/uality on social geographies, the relationship of the body to governmentality and power, rurality and the production of rural identity, and the biopolitical tactics of sexuality as they are deployed toward the production of sexual citizenship and its exclusions. He has broad interests in Social Theory and social justice and his sub-disciplinary concentrations sit in the intersections of cultural, social and political geography with an emphasis on the distributive networks of power in relation to liberal governmentality as they apply to gender, sexual subjectivity, sexuality qua its disciplinary effects on/(and) the body. His dissertation research focuses on how queer space is produced in rural Central Appalachia. Specifically, this research seeks to uncover how/if sexual identity is claimed in these rural places, how are social networks formed by sexual minorities, do these networks constitute community, if so how/are these communities/networks maintained and negotiated across rural places.

His work draws heavily on queer and feminist theories working through Foucaultian notions that seek to disentangle, parse out, and analyze the specific aspects that coordinate the constitution of human subjectivity. However, he is also interested in approaching these theories as a set of methodological tools, rather than merely conceptual abstractions, that can excavate and highlight how the material impacts of these discourses operate on the ground. His long-term interests seek to find ways in which Queer Theory as a methodology for interrogating our realities can be used in new ways that move past sexuality and gender. In this way, he seeks to deploy queer theory as a way of investigating broader applications for research from queering the ‘natural’ sciences to destabilizing the bureaucratization of ethical standards for methods of research to initiating queer Marxist critiques of War, marriage, capitalist practices and so on.

He has been involved with OUTsource, a resource center for sexual and gender minorities and their allies on UK’s campus, helping to organize the group and its resources, as well as, volunteer time running the day to day operations. Currently, he is helping Madeline Flannery of Hazard Community and Technical College, in Hazard, Kentucky to launch a Gay/Straight Alliance in cooperation with her students. He has begun a project with Amelia Kirby of Appalshop based out of Whitesburg, Kentucky, and Jeff Whetsone (a photographer) to document the constitution of ‘Queer Safe Zones’ as the transformational spaces that sexual and gender minorities in rural places use to negotiate between ‘queer’ and ‘straight’ social worlds. And finally, he has a long-term political goal to establish a network for the crisis intervention of displaced queer youth in rural Appalachia that would include a series of half-way houses, counseling, and family intervention to stem the tide of homeless sexual and gender minority youth in the region.

He hopes to be able to find a job as a bourgeoning scholar, professor, and activist in the region to stay close to his research kin, and continue developing productive and progressive political projects for the area that transcend liberal fantasies about rural sexual subjectivities.