On Tuesday 09 April 2019, Professor Ben Crow passed away in San Mateo with family at his side.

Ben Crow was a professor of sociology at UC Santa Cruz. Before becoming a social scientist, Ben trained and worked as an engineer in London and Africa, and was an activist and volunteer in South Asia. His PhD is from Edinburgh University in Scotland, and he taught at the Open University in The UK and at Stanford and UC Berkeley before coming to UCSC. He conducted research on conflict and cooperation over international rivers in South Asia, leading to a book Sharing the Ganges: the politics and technology of river development; on traders, township markets and the making of social classes in rural Bangladesh (Markets, Class and Social Change: Trading Networks and Poverty in South Asia); on global inequalities (The UC Atlas of Global Inequality (online) and The Atlas of Global Inequalities, with Suresh Lodha). His most recent work studied how poor women, men and children gain access to water in urban slums in the global south, with a focus on cities in Kenya; and a comparative study of four cities to look at ‘urban capabilities and the transformation of women’s work.’ More about Ben's work can be found at: https://bcrow.sites.ucsc.edu/research/

Ben was Sociology Department chair from 2011-2014.