Ben is Professor in Social Science and Health in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at King's College London, and is co-leading the 'work, welfare reform and mental health' programme within the Centre for Society & Mental Health. Until July 2022 he was a Reader in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Kent, where he helped co-found the University of Kent's Q-Step centre. For a time in 2015-16 he was on secondment as a Policy Advisor at the Department of Work and Pensions. He has a wide range of research interests, currently focused on disability, the workplace, and the benefits system, attitudes around benefits and 'scroungers’, and the relationship between evidence and policy. He also co-led a mixed-methods project on the benefits system during the Covid-19 pandemic, called 'Welfare at a (Social) Distance'.
