While working on his Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut, Ben has become passionate about researching and teaching human rights conceptualization, measurement, and fulfillment, and how human rights outcomes can be used as indicators of healthy, happy, societies.   He believes in an interactive environment in the classroom, since complicated subjects involving these social outcomes require that current understandings be constantly re-examined and injected with new perspectives.  He has found that students approaching human rights for the first time can offer wonderful insights about the nature and meaning of human rights, and other social phenomena.

Ben was born and raised in Northern Vermont and has also lived in New Hampshire and Connecticut.   He is an avid skier and cyclist, and enjoys anything that gets him outside.