Ben is currently an Instructor in Political Science at Vassar College. His interdisciplinary scholarship draws from Black Studies, river and wetland ecologies, and critical cartographic methods. Through archival study and place-based approaches to research, his current project works towards disrupting disciplined climate change education through methodological deciphering of flooding and ongoing catastrophe.
He is interested in practices located materially outside or outdoors, in aesthetic engagement with affective elements that enliven what is put on the page.
While at CIE Ben was a W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow and also worked as the Book and Media Managing Editor for the Comparative Education Review. In 2021 Ben co-authored an article entitled Black Lives Matter in Our Syllabi: Another World Is Possible which appeared in the Spring 2021 issue of the Comparative Education Review. His other recent publications can be found on his google scholar profile.
Before coming to CIE/UMass Ben spent 10 years as a public school teacher: in Washington State (at a Title 1, International Baccalaureate (IB) school), in rural Southern Louisiana, and in Massachusetts. In Washington, he also co-founded a place-based early childhood program that informed policy leading to Washington State becoming the first in the nation to license publicly funded, outdoor pre-schools.
His interests then led him to work with international education groups in East Africa and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in the Caribbean. He served as Program Director at the Open Learning Exchange, working with refugees living in Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya. [4-23]
Email: scherrerbenjamin@gmail.com