Associate Professor Ben Edwards is a Senior Fellow at the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods and has been the Co-Editor of the Australian Journal of Social Issues since 2017.

Nationally and internationally recognised as a leader in longitudinal studies of children and youth and in social policy. He has led several national and internationally significant longitudinal studies of children and youth including the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, established the first national longitudinal survey of refugees (Building a New Life in Australia (BNLA) and is Principal Investigator of GENERATION a new longitudinal survey of Year 10 students from over 200 schools.

Ben's work has had significant policy impacts with greater recognition of the intergenerational impacts of the Vietnam war and increased counselling services and the implementation of three-year old preschool in Victoria. As Project Director of the Australian Oxford University COVID-19 Government Response Tracker he is leading the development of indicators to aid our understanding of the policy responses to the pandemic by state governments. He has advised numerous governments as well as the OECD and the UNFPA.