Ben is joining the School of Psychology as part of a 5-month research fellowship to work on an E-Delphi study led by Dr Gillian Shorter. This study seeks to determine a core outcome set with regards to the implementation and evaluation of overdose prevention centres in the UK and Ireland. Ben is a PhD student at the University of Oxford and is taking a pause in his studies to undertake this fellowship. 

 

His doctoral research is funded by the Society for the Study of Addiction and is jointly supervised by Dr David Humphreys (University of Oxford), Dr Gillian Shorter (Queen’s University Belfast) and Dr Benjamin Chrisinger (Tufts University). He holds a BA in Combined Social Sciences from the University of Durham and an MA in Public Issues Anthropology from the University of Waterloo where he was funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.  
 
In his PhD project, Ben is using ethnographic methods to conduct an international comparison of the experiences of street-based drug use in settings (UK, Canada, Greece) where overdose prevention centres are implemented to varying degrees. He is passionate about producing research that can support policymakers in their efforts to establish more effective and humane interventions that address rates of overdose.
 
Prior to his doctoral studies, Ben worked in the non-profit sector in Canada and the UK, specifically within client-facing homelessness services such as emergency shelters, overdose prevention centres, housing first and outreach teams and in October 2020, delivered a TEDx talk titled ‘The Logical Next Step in Drug Policy’. 
 
Alongside his studies, Ben is the convenor of the Global Law Enforcement and Public Health Association’s ‘Harm Reduction and Policing’ special interest group and is also a member of the Oxford University Men’s Rugby Team.