Beck, Matthias 1964-

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Beck, Matthias 1964-

PERSONAL:

Born February 17, 1964, in Aalen, Germany; son of Traugott (an engineer) and Elisabeth (a store manager) Beck; married Caroline Hunter (a lawyer), 2000 (died July 21, 2005). Ethnicity: "German." Education: University of Stuttgart, certificate, 1987; University of Kansas, M.Arch., M.U. P., 1989; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ph.D., 1996. Politics: "Christian socialist." Religion: Methodist. Hobbies and other interests: Cycling, watercolor painting.

ADDRESSES:

Home—York, Yorkshire, England. Office—The York Management School, Sally Baldwin Bldg. A, University of York, Heslington, Yorkshire YO10 5DD, England; fax: 44-01904-434163. E-mail—mb541@york.ac.uk.

CAREER:

University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, lecturer in economics and economic history, 1994-95; University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland, lecturer in economics, 1995-98; Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, professor of risk management, 1999-2005; University of York, Heslington, Yorkshire, England, professor of public management and research director, 2005—.

MEMBER:

Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturing, and Commerce (fellow), Phi Kappa Phi.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Award for excellence in business and management press journalism, Institute of Internal Auditors, 2001; Marshall E. Dimock Award for best lead article in Public Administration Review, 2005.

WRITINGS:

(With Charles Woolfson and John Foster) Paying for the Piper: Capital and Labour in Britain's Offshore Oil Industry, Mansell (London, England), 1996.

(With Charles Woolfson, John Foster, and H. Ryggvik) Piper Alpha Ten Years After: Safety and Industrial Relations in the British and Norwegian Offshore Oil Industry, University of Oslo (Oslo, Norway), 1998.

(Editor, with Akintola Akintoye and Cliff Hardcastle) Public-Private Partnership: Managing Risks and Opportunities, Blackwell Science (Malden, MA), 2003.

(Editor, with Charles Woolfson) Corporate Social Responsibility Failures in the Oil Industry, Baywood (Amityville, NY), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals.

SIDELIGHTS:

Matthias Beck told CA: "I was born in 1964 in the southwest German town of Aalen. From 1935 to 1945 Aalen was ruled by a National Socialist mayor whom the town chose to reelect on a Conservative ticket from 1950 to 1970. From 1966 to 1978 my home state of Baden-Württemberg was also ruled by a Conservative governor. This governor was forced to resign when it became apparent that, as a Nazi judge, he had been involved in sentencing four soldiers to death.

"Having adopted a critical attitude toward my environment and my own family at a relatively young age, I left Germany to study in the United States as soon as the opportunity arose. In the United States I eventually completed my studies with a Ph.D. in urban and regional science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. My research interests initially centered on the inequality of power in capitalist societies and the consequences of this inequality on the health and well-being of working people. Over time I have gradually become more interested in crimes of the state in the broadest sense, as well as the collusion of state and capital in propagating harmful acts against those least able to muster resistance.

"I have never felt comfortable with the term ‘writing’ and ultimately do not view myself as a writer in a traditional sense. In my books, articles, and reports I try to convey socially relevant information in a simple, plain, and perhaps often prosaic style. While I would lay no claim to any literary abilities, I would describe the American writers Upton Sinclair, Ida M. Tarbell, and Lincoln Stevens as having had the greatest influence on my work. My favorite book continues to be Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey, which I first read when I was sixteen years old."