A right to home: responding to the housing crisis

10am-5.30pm on Friday 8 June

At the University of Brighton, Grand Parade, Brighton (Boardroom M2)

Event organised by School of Applied Social Science, University of Brighton

In contemporary British society, the so-called housing crisis and inequality around access to housing is a central theme in public debates.

Yet, the current hyper-commodification of the housing market, mass-scale dispossession, the dismantling of the social rental sector and rising levels of homelessness do not only entail an unequal distribution of housing, but also reflect the conditionality of access to the right to home. The right to home disrupts the hegemony of the right to buy, where housing is tied to individual ownership and accumulation. Rather, a right to home is about inhabiting social space, a right to a stable trajectory and belonging to communities.

This symposium aims to bring together researchers of housing inequality across the UK to explore the concept of a right to home from different perspectives. The event will provide a space to explore the global and historical interconnections of the housing crisis and its localised consequences on the social formation of home across the UK.

The symposium will bring together early career and established researchers, facilitating discussion and debate across disciplines of urban sociology, human geography, history, architecture and housing studies.

Confirmed speakers include:

– Dr. Stephanie Grohmann

– Dr. Lucy Finchett-Maddock

– Dr. Rebecca Searle

– Dr. Eleanor Wilkinson

– Dr. David Madden

– Dr. Paul Watt

– Prof. Phil Hubbard