Dr. Ben Jones is a social anthropologist whose research looks at social and political change.   Alongside his position at the Centre of African Studies Ben is a Professor of Social Anthropology with the School of Global Development at the University of East Anglia.

Ben’s work focuses on the Teso region of eastern Uganda, where he has conducted long-term fieldwork since 2003. He brings recent experience working on two British Academy-funded projects on youth, educationand work in rural Uganda. In these projects he has been working collaboratively with young Ugandans. They have undertaken detailed ethnographic work together, published papers in leading journals and are documenting their work together in films and on social media.

Ben and his Ugandan colleagues are currently working with Northwestern University using ethnographic approaches to understand development interventions in two refugee camps in western Uganda. He is also supporting Tufts University on a new project on agro-pastoralism in Uganda and Kenya under conditions of climate change. In partnership with the Busara Centre for Behavioural Economics in Nairobi, and the University of East Anglia, Ben is also working on a two-year British Academy funded project looking at how the treatment of enumerators – precariously employed young people who do survey work in major development interventions – shapes the quality of data. 

Ben received funding from the Danish Council for the Social Sciences for his postdoctoral work at Roskilde University, and has worked with colleagues at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) looking at gender, norms and international organisations.  His work with the Centre of African Studies will be focused on the 'Multiple Waterscapes in Urban Ghana' research project.  The research has funding from the Danish Council for Devleopment Research (FFU) and partners with Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana, DIIS and the Geneva Water Hub.

Ben is on the editorial board of the journal Africa. 

In his profile photo you can see members of the "asianut" savings group in the background.  Ben has written about the work of this group with his colleague Sarah Amongin, you can read it here.