Housing study through Chinese eyes

Fei Zheng is not only a part-time student in the MSc Housing and Real Estate programme; she is also working in a Housing Association as a trainee housing officer.  This gave her the opportunity to learn more about social housing, both as a practitioner and as an academic. I am originally from Beijing and my […]


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Britain’s housing crisis is deepening

Britain’s housing crisis appears to be deepening, and attracting widespread comment in the media. Professor Glen Bramley, Director of IHURER, explains what policies could promote greater housing supply. Britain has a serious housing shortage. My colleague Colin Jones blogged on this topic a few weeks ago. This week I had the opportunity to speak at […]


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A twit to who?

Paul Whybrow, PhD researcher at IHURER and full-time researcher at the University of Newcastle, shares his thoughts on the rise of social media and the importance of collaborative research.


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Making an impact with a PhD in planning

Judith Montford is doing PhD research at IHURER into the relationship between different residential layout/patterns and mental wellbeing. Here she describes how she became interested in the way our natural and built environment influences our lives. A question anyone who wishes to a PhD should ask themselves is ‘why they want to do it’. A […]


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Lifelong learning from the East

Mark Stephens, Professor of Public Policy at IHURER, describes how he first became interested in the post-communist transformation of housing systems in Central and Eastern Europe. Growing up during the cold war, “Eastern Europe,” as it was then known, was something of a mystery. In an era when travel was far less affordable than it […]


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Deciding to do a PhD

IHURER PhD student Kathryn Gilchrist is currently writing up her PhD, which focuses on how access to greenspace and nature in the work place affects people’s health and wellbeing. Her research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).  In this post, she describes what it is like to do a PhD at […]


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Trickling trickle down UK housing policies?

In November 2011, David Cameron promised a package of policies to “get Britain building again”. Colin Jones, Professor of Estate Management at the IHURER research institute explains why housebuilding in the UK still fails to keep pace with population growth. A UK government report in 2007 noted, “For a generation, the supply of new homes […]


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A bad week for good news?

It has been said that this week in the middle of January is the ‘worst week of the year’, as evidenced by such measures as suicides. I am not sure if this is true, in any sense, or just an urban/public health myth. But, as someone with a birthday on 21 January, I have always […]


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