People
Dr Ben Coles
Lecturer in Environmental and Economic Geography
School/Department: Geography Geology & The Environment, School of
Telephone: +44 (0)116 252 3838
Email: bfc2@leicester.ac.uk
Profile
I am an environmental economic geographer and political ecologist in the School of Geography, Geology and Environment (SGGE) and Institute of Environmental Futures (IEF). My interdisciplinary research explores the links between the environmental impacts of commodities, markets, and their relationships to social-biodiversity and the bio-economy in the Global South – specifically Brazil and Latin America. With a particular focus on issues of social and ecological justice, my interests lie in how marginalised and traditional communities play vital roles in sustaining fragile ecosystems, whilst maintaining livelihoods amidst environmental change. My research has long-focused on how commodities and markets connect to resource 'nexuses', and the production landscapes in which they are located.
I hold a PhD in Geography from the University of London, a Masters in Geography from the University of Kansas and Bachelor's of Science in Applied Analytical Geography, also from the University of Kansas.
Research
My current research project (2025-28), funded by the UKRI-CNPq Amazon+10 (c. £950k), works with traditional communities in the Brazilian Amazon. This 3-year interdisciplinary is part of a consortium of 11 research institutions in Brazil. It engages with forest and river communities in the Amazon and the ways in which they understand and utilise social-diversity and forest resources. Using a participatory approach to social-biodiversity monitoring, the project interrogates community use of app-based monitoring tools and machine learning to better understand and articulate how social-biodiversity is understood.
These communities hold deep ecological knowledge that can provide crucial insights into biodiversity conservation. And one objective of this project is to strengthen the political and economic agency of these often-marginalised communities, enabling them to assert control over their territorial lands and resources. https://www.ukri.org/what-we-do/browse-our-areas-of-investment-and-support/amazon-10-initiative-research-expeditions-to-the-amazon/)
Recent funded projects include Tiny Beam Foundation (2024-25) (c.£60k) to analyse the ecological and economic pacts of the chicken industry focusing on China and the Global South. (https://www.issuelab.org/resources/45034/45034.pdf).
Independent Science Research Fund (2023-24) (c£8k) Beyond Net-Zero – Assessing and Extending Social and Environmental Understandings of Wind Power, a multidisciplinary investigation that brings Geology and Geography together to interrogate the into the global material, economic, and socio-environmental impacts of Net-Zero transitions, focused particularly on the wind energy industry.
More broadly I have conceptual and methodological interests in place, space and scale as they are mobilised through the geographies of commodities. This leads to particular interest in the nexus of food water and energy as they intersect with ‘the’ marketplace to shape/reshape political-economic space. Conceptually, my recent focus has been on resource nexuses more generally, and on ‘critical nexus thinking’ as a means to interrogate social-spatial interconnectivity, address the moral assumptions associated with notions of 'ethical', and redress the implicit contradictions with resource economies.
I utilise these perspectives in variety of political and economic contexts in Latin America (Brazil), as well as the UK and EU, to examine a diverse array of geographical questions about the 'bio-economy', ‘net zero’ resources, the ‘geographies’ of commodities focusing on places of production/consumption/in-between (ie farms, factories and markets) and their underlying nexus of interrelated and interconnected resources (e.g. water/energy).
Publications
Books:
Coles, B (2021). Buzzing Market: Place, Topo/graphy and the Making of a Marketplace. Palgrave Macmillon
Jackson, P., & The CONANX Group (Coles, B). (2013). Food Words: essays in culinary culture. London: Bloomsbury Academic
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles:
Coles B (in review) Anthropocene Chicken: A Geography of and Towards a Geography for the Anthropocene. Geography Journal
Coles B Evans D and Maye D (in review). Food Geographies of, for and in the Anthropocene. Introduction to Special Issue of Geography Journal.
Walker, C. and Coles B (2021). Points of Convergence: deploying the geographies of critical nexus-thinking. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space.
Morris, C., Kaljonen, M., Aavik, K. Coles B. et al. (2021) Priorities for social science and humanities research on the challenges of moving beyond animal-based food systems. Humanities and Social Sciences Communication 8, 38.
Zara, C., Coles, B., Hadfield-Hill, S., Horton, J., Kraftl, P., (2020) Geographies of food beyond food: transfiguring nexus-thinking through encounters with young people in Brazil. Social and Cultural Geographies
Bennett, C.E., Thomas, R., Williams, M., Zalasiewicz, J., Edgeworth, M., Miller, H., Coles, B., Foster, A., Burton, E.J. and Marume, U., 2018. The broiler chicken as a signal of a human reconfigured biosphere. Royal Society open science, 5(12), p.180325.
Kraftl, P., Balastieri, J.A.P., Campos, A.E.M., Coles, B., Hadfield-Hill, S., Horton, J., Soares, P.V., Vilanova, M.R.N., Walker, C. and Zara, C., 2019. (Re) thinking (re) connection: Young people, "natures" and the water-energy-food nexus in São Paulo State, Brazil. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 44(2), pp.299-314.
Coles, B. (2016). Mixing space: affinitive practice and the insurgent potential of food. Geographica Helvetica, 71(3), 189-197.