Ben Highmore (he/him) is a writer and teacher and a specialist in postwar British art and culture. Currently he is professor of cultural studies at the University of Sussex. He studied fine art in Sheffield in the 1980s and then went on to complete the MA in the Social History of Art at Leeds University at the start of the 1990s. He defended his doctoral thesis at Birkbeck College, University of London in 2000.
He has worked as consultant for the exhibition Postwar Modern 1945-65 at the Barbican and has written catalogue essays for exhibitions at the Guggenheim and elsewhere. His books include The Art of Brutalism: Rescuing Hope from Catastrophe in 1950s Britain (Yale), Lifestyle Revolution: How Taste Changed Class in Late Twentieth Century Britain (Manchester), and The Great Indoors: At Home in the Modern British House (Profile). He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2021. He has received research grants from the Leverhulme Trust, the British Academy, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
