King’s College London geographer recognised for research on women’s experiences of precarious housing

Professor Katherine Brickell, Professor of Urban Studies in the Department of Geography, has been awarded a British Academy fellowship worth close to £150,000. The mid-career fellowship recognises outstanding mid-career academics whose research will promote public engagement with, and understanding of, the SHAPE disciplines.

Professor Brickell’s research focuses on the debt intimately tied to women’s experiences of precarious housing during times of austerity, the financialisation of social reproduction, and the cost of living and energy poverty crises.

With this fellowship, she will be able to focus more on this major piece of research, by freeing her from normal teaching and administrative commitments.

As housing becomes less affordable, the number of private evictions are rising, and with this, family homelessness is now an urgent national challenge. Thanks to this fellowship, I can dedicate more time to my research in this area, working with the Shared Health Foundation in Greater Manchester.
– Professor Katherine Brickell, Professor of Urban Studies
Professor Brickell plans to write a monograph entitled ‘A Feminist Geography of Debt and Housing Precarity’. To push for policy change, with research participants she will be contributing to the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Households in Temporary Accommodation. For more follow on Twitter @DebtUrbanism.

She has also been appointed Editor of the academic journal, ‘Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (Transactions).’

After an inspiring six years as editor of Gender, Place & Culture, I am looking forward to engaging with scholars from across the discipline to showcase their research and working with the Transactions editorial team to further the journal’s commitment to providing space for more collective and collaborative approaches to geographical debate.
– Professor Katherine Brickell, Professor of Urban Studies