Matthew Tye

Matthew Tye (born 1986) is a British student of gerontology at the Oxford Institute of Ageing (University of Oxford). He became known as an organiser of community projects in Birmingham while a teenager. In 2007 he was the youngest recipient of a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship, which provided support for a research project comparing responses to population ageing in Vietnam and Canada. Tye is the co-founder of the Vietnam Academic Network (VAN-UK), which aims to promote academic relations between Vietnam and the United Kingdom, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a member of the British Society of Gerontology.
Biography
Early life
Matthew Tye comes from Handsworth, an inner city area of Birmingham, England. His mother Hoa had been born in Vietnam and had left as a refugee. and then studying at Handsworth Grammar School until 2005.
As a teenager he was known for community work in Handsworth, organised a volunteer rubbish-clearing programme, and raised neighbourhood awareness of the responsibilities of the city council. In July 2003, at the age of 16, he was the youngest of six recipients of the Deutsche Bank Spotlight Awards, national awards for teenagers who have campaigned to improve their local communities,
He read for a BA in Human Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he obtained first-class honours. In 2007, while still a second-year undergraduate at Royal Holloway, Tye was awarded a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship which allowed him to compare provision for elderly people in Vietnam and North America. His Vietnamese-born mother accompanied him to Hanoi. Also in 2007, the Royal Holloway Academic Awards Group awarded Tye the Max Cary Memorial Award for a photographic project based on his fieldwork with refugees and asylum seekers in Glasgow.
Oxford
Tye graduated from Royal Holloway in 2008 and went on to study for a Master's degree in Comparative Social Policy at Oxford. His research, based at the Oxford Institute of Ageing, centred on "intergenerational transfers, ageing-related policies and welfare states".
While at Oxford Tye co-founded the Vietnam Academic Network (VAN-UK) in order to promote academic relations between Vietnam and the United Kingdom. He organised the grouping's first international conference, which took place at the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School on 20 March 2009. As chair of the first half of the conference, Tye received guests including the British Ambassador to Vietnam, Mark Kent, and the Vietnamese Ambassador to the UK, Tran Quang Hoan. Peter Jennings issued an apology but the incident was regarded in the media as an embarrassment for Archbishop Nichols. In the same month, Tye was elected by a cross-university ballot as the Black and Ethnic Minority Students and Anti-Racism Officer on the Oxford University Student Union. His election manifesto carried an endorsement from Khalid Mahmood, the Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr.
Tye was named in 2009 as one of 14 students across Europe to receive an AXA Doctoral Research Fellowship. The title of his PhD project is "Increasing Longevity in Vietnam: Strategies for Long-Term Care - the Intergenerational Contract".

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