Dr Emma Ormerod: “Housing hope: the place of politics and people in housing governance”

NINE DTP Postdoctoral Fellow: 2018-19

Project Description:

I am an ESRC Research Fellow in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University. My current research project ‘Housing Hope: the place of politics and people in housing governance’ builds on previous research that explored increasingly entrepreneurial forms of housing governance. Whilst raising critical questions about transparency, accountability, ‘publicness’, politics and wider democracy, this new area of work will examine the ways in which people imagine housing; questioning whether ‘hope’ and ‘expectation’ can be understood as potential political resources in housing struggles.

Before joining Newcastle University, I completed my PhD in the Department of Geography at Durham University. My PhD project titled ‘The Local State of Housing: Deepening Entrepreneurial Governance and the Place of Politics and Publics’ examined how the governance of housing is transforming, with powerful impacts on inequality and local politics in British cities. It focused on a growing shift towards the local state becoming a housing developer, moving in increasingly entrepreneurial directions under times of austerity. The following dissemination reports have been written from this research:

• ‘Experts and Evidence: Learning from Housing Market Renewal in Gateshead’
• ‘Gateshead Regeneration Partnership: An Evaluation’

My research interests in urban geography have been shaped though my previous ten-year career in town planning, and I am committed to knowledge exchange with practice and communities alongside contributing to academic debates.

Publications:

• Ormerod E, MacLeod G. Beyond consensus and conflict in housing governance: Returning to the local state. Planning Theory 2018, Epub ahead of print.
• Pain R, Heslop J, Ormerod E, Butler-Rees A, Crawshaw H, Davisson H, Dawson L, Fairhurst M, Galin M, Harman D, Holloway E, James T, Liu A, Chau C, Qing H, Read F, Smith M, Somerset C, Sporik E, Turner I. DISPOSAL: The Housing Crisis in Horden’s Numbered Streets. Durham University: Centre for Social Justice and Community Action, 2016.