Ambreen Ben-Shmuel

Ambreen Ben-Shmuel is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, a joint program of the Ross School of Business and the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is an organizational sociologist who employs multiple qualitative methodologies to study how organizations navigate complex challenges when working across deep institutional divides.

Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Ambreen studies organizations operating at the intersection of sustainability and conflict, examining how they develop innovative practices to enable cooperation despite significant political and structural constraints. Her work explores organizational adaptation, power dynamics, and how organizations create possibilities for engagement in extreme contexts where traditional approaches may fail.

She has received competitive fellowships from the Azrieli Foundation and Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace, and recognition for her work from the Academy of Management (Best Student Paper Award, 2024) and the Sophie Davis Forum (Best Paper Award, 2025). Ambreen earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, from which she earned multiple degrees, as well as a B.A. from Rice University. She brings nearly two decades of practitioner experience with conflict resolution and environmental organizations to her academic work.