Dr Ben Hawkins
MA MSc PhD
Associate Professor
LSHTM
15-17 Tavistock Place
London
WC1H 9SH
United Kingdom
My background is in international politics, policy analysis and qualitative social science research methodologies. In particular, my past work focused on the relationship between Britian and the EU. My PhD examined the issue of British euroscepticism through an analysis of the debates surrounding the European Constitution and the Treaty of Lisbon. Prior to my PhD I worked in sales and marketing for Diageo, a leading alcoholic drinks retailer.
Affiliations
Centres
Teaching
I am Deputy prgramme Director on the distance learning MSc in Global Health Policy and Module Organiser for GHM 102 (The politics of Global Health Policy) on thesame prpgramme. I am also a contributor of sessions on this, and the programme's other, core modules, focussing on the role of corporate actors, the state and international financial institutions (i.e. the World Bank, IMF and WTO) as actors in global health policy.
In addition, I lecture on corporate actors and tobacco regulation on the in-house module Globalisation and Health and the DrPH core module on Evidence Based Public Health Policy. I also teach discourse theory and discursive approaches to policy analysis on the module Sociological Approaches to Health.
I welcome applications from current MSc students to supervise summer projects on alcohol and tobacco policy or other policy issues related to my research interests, including the use of evidence in policy making. Similarly, I offer PhD supervision in these areas and am happy to discuss potential research projects and supervision arrangements with potential applicants to the school.
Research
My research focuses on the influence of corporate actors (mainly in the alcohol and tobacco industries) over health policy at the national, regional and global levels. Between 2010-2012 I completed an Alcohol Research UK funded project on the role of corporate actors in the development and implementation of policies to tackle alcohol related harm.
Subsequently, I worked on two collaborative research projects based at the School. The first, funded by the NIH, focused on international trade agreements and their impact on global tobacco control policies. The second was an ERC funded project on the use of scientific evidence to inform health policy. Following this, I undertook a study of UK alcohol policy and corporate lobbying under the 2010-2015 coalition goverrnment as part of a Wellcome trust funded research prgramme based at the University of York.
My current work focuses on the consequences of the changing trade and investment environment for corporate political power and health policy making.
Selected Publications
