Mattingly's grandfather,
Harold Mattingly, was Keeper of the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum, and his father,
Harold B. Mattingly, was Professor of Ancient History at Leeds University. He received a
Bachelor of Arts (BA) in history at the
University of Manchester, and later a
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) from the same university, under the supervision of
Barri Jones. His
doctoral thesis was titled "
Tripolitania: A comparative study of a Roman frontier province", and was submitted in 1984. He was then a
British Academy Post-doctoral fellow at the
Institute of Archaeology, in Oxford until 1989. He was then Assistant Professor at the
University of Michigan in the United States. At Leicester University he was first Lecturer, then Reader (1995), and most recently Professor (since 1998). In 2003, he was elected a
Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. ==Scholarship==