Dr Ben Chrisinger

Dr Ben Chrisinger was Associate Professor of Evidence-Based Policy Evaluation at DSPI from 2019-2023. His research primarily focuses on place and health, with specific interests in health disparities, food access, and the built environment. He is particularly interested in the use of participatory methods in place-based research, and is a member of the Our Voice Citizen Science Global Network. 

Prior to leaving DSPI, Dr Chrisinger completed a digital humanities project to extract and visualise data from the inaugural volume of the American Medical Directory, supported by the OUP John Fell Fund and DSPI. An interactive website for this project allows visitors to explore early racial disparities in access to professional medical care in the United States, and the dataset has now been archived at the University of Oxford (visit the archive). He continues to work with UK colleagues on several projects, including an GACD-MRC active mobility study led by UCL (see One the way to school project).

Dr Chrisinger is an urban planner by training and completed his PhD in City & Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania, and Masters and Bachelors degrees in Urban & Environmental Planning at the University of Virginia. Before joining DSPI, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Health at Tufts University.