Ben was appointed Foundation Professor of Psychology in 1998 and is now Professor Emeritus. Head of Psychology from 1998-2006, Ben went on to be Dean of Arts, Director of the CSU Degree Initiative, and Presiding Officer of Senate. He resigned from CSU in 2017 to complete Darwin’s Psychology (OUP, 2020), which unearths a Darwin whose key concern was the agency of organisms—from which Darwin derived both his psychology, and his theory of evolution (https://extendedevolutionarysynthesis.com/darwin-1-0-is-the-ees-playing-catch-up/)

Ben has worked on three continents, winning research grants from the MRC and British Academy (UK), NH&MRC and ARC (Australia), and Harvard University (USA). Darwin aside, the bulk of Ben’s research has been on infant sociability. His Visions of Infancy (1989) has been translated into Spanish, French and Italian. He has also published on: infant hatefulness; ante-natal depression; ‘belonging’ in child-care; critical psychology; and evidence that preverbal babies show ‘groupness’ – simultaneously interacting with more than one other group-member.