Ben Purvis (they/he) is an interdisciplinary critical social scientist, with expertise relating to discourses of sustainability, particularly in relation to social, economic, and political aspects. He joined the Grantham Centre’s Sustainability Assessment Team as a Research Associate in January 2025.
Initially from a physics background, Ben completed their PhD at the University of Nottingham in 2020 within the interdisciplinary Laboratory of Urban Complexity and Sustainability. Here, they developed a critical social science lens by putting quantitative methods, including indicator approaches, simulation modelling, and systems thinking, into discussion with discourses on data problems, policymaking, interdisciplinarity, social issues, and the politics of measurement.
Ben moved to the University of Sheffield in 2020, where they have worked as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate within the Sheffield School of Architecture (SSoA), and Sheffield University Management School (SUMS). At SUMS, Ben led a Work Package on the Horizon 2020 funded project a Just Transition to a Circular Economy (JUST2CE), concerned with the integration of aspects of environmental justice, gender, and labour in the assessment of globalised supply chains.
Ben’s core interests in relation to sustainability assessment relate to methodology, science communication, and the philosophy and politics of measurement. They engage with a wide range of related bodies of literature including ecological economics, political ecology, political economy, responsible research & innovation, and science and technology studies.