Ben Pluska is a first-year PhD student whose prospective research examines how post-socialist development in Poland has reconfigured agrarian and peasant lifeways, rural economies, and socio-ecological systems. His dissertation will employ ethnographic and geospatial methods to investigate the intersection of the pan-European neo-peasant movement, European Union development initiatives and the Common Agricultural Policy, and Poland's post-socialist transformation since 1989.

Previously, Ben conducted collaborative environmental justice research in eastern North Carolina, focusing on the politics of waste, industrial animal agriculture, and the disproportionate and disparate ecological burdens shouldered by historically marginalized communities.

Ben has existed as an organizer and farmer outside of academia by way of legislative advocacy, mutual aid and abolitionist organizing. He also worked in Tribal reservations and rural geographies to advance food sovereignty and just economic development.