Ben Murphy

Research interests:

Ben’s research interests center on human-environment relationships and encounters. Ben is primarily interested in how people relate to, and connect with natural environments. Previous reserch has focussed on this trhough looking at various forms of outdoor recreation, including hiking, running and swimming. Ben’s undergraduate dissertation researched trail running, exploring how runners’ experiences foster a deeper and more environemntally aware connection to their surroundings. Research utilised creative and experiential methods and findings were artistically presented through alternative forms of presentation (e.g. poetry, photo-collage and video) For his Masters by research, Ben built on the advanced social science research methods developed trhough courses and digitised his research, which focused on the cultural economies of extreme endurance events. A planned field trip to the Cape Wrath Ultra-marathon was swapped for digital ethnogrphy, online interviews and media interpretation to adapt to the pandemic.

Ben has also contributed to EFI’s research on Edinburgh city council’s spaces for people project, providing research support and contributing to a report published on Edinburgh city council’s city centre transformation plan.

I setup and ran my own research project with REMAKE Scotland to understand the organisations carbon savings through adopting circualr economy principles. I calculated carbon savings from a week of sales at the remake hub.

Ben recently completed a SAGES internship with Highlands and Islands’ Science Skills academy (SSA). Through applying knowledge gained in outdoor education work, Ben designed and planned an interactive outdoor lesson for the SS team to deliver to pupils across the Highlands. Focusing on Peatlands and climate change, drawing on his outdoor education research, and past experiences working with additional support needs children, and as a mountain leader, Ben created a two part 100min lesson plan which will be delivered later in th year.

Ben has now moved to the university of Glasgow’s school of Education, working with fellow SAGES member Ria Dunkley on eco-pedagogy and Global citizenship Education (GCE). At this early stage Ben will be analysing survey data and evlauting a three year EU funded GCE project (Walk the Global Walk). Other research opportunities await through Duke of Edinburgh expeditions and exploring minority groups’ expereinces of the outdoors.