Chris Brown is Professor in Education at Durham University's School of Education. His own interest in networks began with a chance encounter and a leftfield conversation at the age of five, which resulted in a life-changing difference: the idea that after school, there was a thing called 'university'.

In addition to his lived experience in this area, Chris' research activity is also focused on driving forward understanding as to how networks can be used to improve people's life chances, as well as close the outcomes gaps that exist between the richest and poorest communities.

This work has been recognized from its innovative nature. For example, in 2018 Chris received a Siftung Mercator Foundation Senior Fellowship, one of only six awarded annually. Other recent prizes received by Chris include the 2015 American Educational Research Association 'Emerging Scholar' award and the 2016 UCEA Jeffrey V. Bennett Outstanding International Research award.

Chris was also recently awarded a significant research grant by the German Foundation Bosch 'Stiftung' to examine the effectiveness of area-based reforms: in themselves a specific form network-based approach to improving the outcomes of the most impoverished communities.