Across the UK, and internationally, housing has become framed through the language of crises and emergency, spanning issues such as affordability, accessibility, safety, homelessness, allocation and impacts on the climate. These framings are not politically neutral. They shape how problems are defined, whose experiences count and which solutions are deemed urgent, acceptable or possible. At the same time, housing has long been a potent site of populist politics, mobilised through narratives of scarcity, deservingness, national belonging and protection of property values.
This lecture examines how crisis narratives in housing are produced, circulated and instrumentalised, and with what consequences. It asks how appeals to emergency can both enable progressive interventions - such as renewed investment, stronger regulation and climate action - while also legitimising exclusionary or authoritarian responses, including welfare retrenchment, displacement and the stigmatisation of marginalised groups. Drawing on examples from the UK and beyond, the lecture explores the intersection of housing politics with populism, austerity and inequality, and considers the implications for housing research, policy, and activism.
The lecture will reflect on how research can challenge arguably simplistic crises framings, amplify lived experience and contribute to more democratic, just and sustainable housing futures.
Pricing: Members attend the Housing Studies Association Autumn Lecture for free, with non-members required to pay £35 to attend, or join the Association for £25 per year.
Members to access the tickets at £0, please log into the website before ordering your ticket.
Speakers
Sophie Gordon
Sophie Gordon is Associate Director of Communications at FrameWorks UK – a not-for-profit communications research organisation that works with mission-driven organisations to communicate about social issues in ways that will create change.
FrameWorks’ research shows how people understand social issues, and uses this knowledge to develop and test strategic communications to help organisations shape public conversations.
Sophie’s recent work includes helping organisations to reframe housing as part of the Talking about Homes project in partnership with JRF and the Nationwide Foundation. Before joining FrameWorks in early 2022, Sophie was the Creative Director and lead writer for the UK’s largest child protection charity, the NSPCC.
Dr Jessica Field
Dr Jessica Field is a social historian, writer, and Research Affiliate at the University of Manchester, working on housing insecurity, tenant activism, and homelessness. Her book, Eviction: A Social History of Rent (Verso, 2025), tells the history of working-class renting in Britain grounded in her own family's fight against a mass eviction in Leeds.
In 2022 she won the Dawn Foster Memorial Essay Prize for "Fighting for Cardboard City," an article centred on the gendered burdens of frontline tenant activism. She is also the author of Lifelines: A History of Temporary Accommodation in England, 1834–2011 (Justlife, 2026), a major report arguing that poor conditions and discriminatory treatment in temporary accommodation are structurally produced.
Dr Michael Byrne
Dr. Michael Byrne is Associate Professor at UCD’s School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice. His primary research concerns the political economy of housing, with a particular focus on rental housing. He recently published Beyond Generation Rent: Political Economy, Inequality, and the Private Rental Sector (Polity Press), and has published widely in journals such as Housing Studies, Environment and Planning A, International Journal of Housing Policy and Housing Policy Debate. He also writes The Week in Housing on Substack.
Dr Pratichi Chatterjee
Dr Pratichi Chatterjee is a researcher whose work sits at the intersection of urban geography, planning and housing. She is based in the School of Geography and Planning, at the University of Sheffield. Her current research, funded by the Housing Studies Charitable Trust, traces the history of race and housing in England, with a focus on the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire. Previously, Pratichi has held academic positions in the UK and Australia. Her professional experience includes work on issues of homelessness and the built environment.
