Mathew has graduate degrees in law from the National Law School, Bangalore and the University of Warwick, and completed his doctoral work at the London School of Economics on the impact of secularism on Indian constitutional practice. He has previously worked at the Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore on social justice lawyering; he was a law and culture fellow at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore; and has been a visiting fellow at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University.