Every year at the conference we announce the winner of the Valerie Karn prize. Valerie was a housing researcher of compassion and conviction. She believed in the power of research to challenge and change policy by exposing the injustices of life in urban society. She was also a passionate advocate of community engagement and action. The prize is financed through donations made in Valerie Karn’s memory from her daughter and other family and friends. The prize winner will be awarded a £100 Waterstone’s gift voucher and will receive support towards the professional production and dissemination of the winning paper.
We are pleased to announce that the latest (2025) winner of the Valerie Karn Early Career Researcher Prize is:
Manon Burbidge (University of Manchester), Unpayable bills, black mould and broken cookers: Exploring refugees' lived realities of energy poverty through a Photovoice project in Greater Manchester
Bio: Manon Burbidge is a PhD researcher at the University of Manchester, where she is investigating the drivers and experiences of energy poverty amongst refugee communities living in the UK and its links to wider inequalities. She has a background in Physical Geography (Durham University, UK) and Human Ecology (Lund University, Sweden). She also worked as a Research Associate on EU-funded projects around energy poverty, renewable energy access and energy communities prior to starting her PhD. Her research interests are broad, spanning energy, housing, justice, gender, migration and climate change.
Paper Abstract: Refugees living in England are more likely on average to be vulnerable to energy poverty, yet literature on their lived experiences and how they navigate the UK energy system remains rare. As a contribution towards filling this research gap, the paper presented the results of a participatory Photovoice project, undertaken with seven refugees in Greater Manchester, to explore the energy-related issues that they faced in their everyday lives. Through a combination of words and photographs, the paper traces how everyday household objects were revealed to be material embodiments of the prioritisations and trade-offs that participants employed to manage their energy use in the face of low incomes and high energy costs. The paper also highlights the need to centre the seemingly mundane, everyday “things” that so often go unnoticed, which in reality can reveal detailed insights into how a lack of energy is lived, embodied, and entangled with stories of seeking asylum, debt, fear, identity and home-making.
Highly commended entrants for 2025 are:
Garett Grainger (Manchester Metropolitan University), What Barriers Do Administrators Face Whilst Upgrading their Data Assemblage?
Bio: Dr. Garrett L. Grainger is an early-career researcher with posts at Manchester Metropolitan University, Wrexham University, and Housing and Society. His research scholarship examines homeless policy, housing finance, and local governance. Dr. Grainger’s work has been published in Housing Studies; Housing, Theory and Society; Urban Geography; Housing and Society; Journal for Social Distress and Homelessness; and International Journal on Homelessness.
Paper abstract: Built for Zero (BFZ) is a data-driven methodology that some US homeless systems are using to allocate housing assistance. The “by-name data” that BFZ needs is produced by actors within a “data assemblage:” a socio-technical system that people re/create to produce, analyse, and use data. Although BFZ is diffusing across the Global North, little research has examined the barriers that administrators face whilst upgrading their systems’ data assemblage with this methodology. This paper advances housing scholarship by using interview data from 28 US homeless systems to answer the question: what barriers do administrators face whilst upgrading their data assemblage with BFZ? I delineate four barriers that fray the network ties administrators need to produce by-name data: disinterest, fragmentation, noncompliance, and incapacity. My analysis shows how data assemblage theory can be used to understand homeless governance and delineates several factors that complicate data sharing within homeless systems.
Neftalem Emanuel (Oxford University), From Neglect to Distress: How Disinvestment in Local Authority Housing Affects Resident Wellbeing
Bio: Neftalem Emanuel is a DPhil (PhD) candidate in Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on housing inequalities and the impact of local authority (dis-)investment on the wellbeing and mobility of council housing tenants in England. Drawing on longitudinal data, his work examines how (dis-)investment in public housing intersects with broader questions of health, stability and state accountability. Neftalem's work is generously supported by the ESRC's Grand Union DTP and Nuffield College award.
Paper Abstract: The paper, Damp Places, Unhappy Faces, explores how local authority spending on council housing repairs and maintenance affects the wellbeing of council housing residents in England. Using data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) and local government financial returns between 2013 and 2022, the study applies a hierarchical modelling approach to assess the relationship between local-level investment and tenants’ mental and physical health. The findings suggest that higher spending on repairs is associated with improvements in resident wellbeing and those in poorer housing conditions benefiting disproportionately the most — highlighting the public health value of maintaining the existing housing stock. The paper also contributes to recent analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and the Institute for Government (IfG) on the consequences of underinvestment in public services.
Stay tuned for more information on their papers, and you can read about previous Valerie Karn prize winners here
