People

Ella Harris is a researcher and writer interested in 'crisis cultures', epistemically just creative methods and inventive knowledge exchange strategies. She is currently working on the project Story Arcs at Bath Spa University as the Narrative Exchange Champion as well as undertaking freelance research for clients including Natural England, Caring in Bristol and the Runnymede Trust. 

Previously, Ella was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Geography Department at Birkbeck, University of London. Prior to this, she was an ESRC postdoctoral fellow in the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. She's also worked as a research assistant in the Geography Department at Royal Holloway University on a collaborative project on pop-up social housing. She completed a PhD in Cultural Geography at Royal Holloway University in 2017.

Ella has published widely on subjects including the cultural geographies of precarity, pop-up culture, housing insecurity, immersive cinema and interactive documentary. Her book on pop-up culture is out now and her latest interactive documentary, about COVID-19 lockdown in London, can be found here. 

Mel Nowicki is a Senior Lecturer in Urban Geography at Oxford Brookes University. Broadly her research interests lie in housing inequality, precarity and the concept of home. Mel's research projects have included: understanding the impact of the criminalisation of squatting and the bedroom tax in London, experiences of family homelessness and temporary accommodation in London and Dublin, and the rise of Tiny Housing as a 'solution' to global housing crises. Mel has published work both in academic journals, national news websites, and in a policy context. Her forthcoming book, Bringing Home the Housing Crisis (Bristol Policy Press) brings together multiple strands of her research to consider how the concept of home is politicised in order to de-legitimise working-class and low-income people's rights to home. 

Tim White is a PhD candidate on the Cities Programme at LSE. His doctoral research examines the rise of the co-living sector - corporate shared housing for young professionals - and he has undertaken work in London, Berlin and San Francisco looking at the production and consumption of this phenomenon. Prior to starting his PhD, Tim worked as a researcher at LSE Cities.

Tim is interested in how cities are reshaped by money and power, particularly at the intersection of housing, finance and technology. Prior to and alongside his PhD, he has worked on a number of research projects, including: understanding the experience of high-density housing in London, exploring the Tiny House phenomenon in Texas, and reviewing international policy on foreign property ownership. His work has been published in a range of academic and non-academic contexts, including Urban Geography and The Guardian.

Clarissa Gomes is a postgraduate student in the MA Brands, Communication and Culture at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research interests are focused on the relationship between urban experience and consumption, the implications of the commodification of the urban landscape, and the potential of disruptive art interventions in those scenarios. Originally from Brazil, she lives in London and works as Online Marketing Coordinator for a trend forecasting agency.

Robert Shaw is a Lecturer in Geography at Newcastle University. His research has explored multiple different aspects of the urban night, including the working lives of taxi drivers, changes in public and domestic lighting, nocturnal protest movements, and night-time mobilities. His 2018 book The Nocturnal City was the culmination of that work to date, arguing for a deeper focus on conceptualisations of the night when exploring urban governance. He has also published on non-representational theory, and concepts of assemblage and atmosphere. As well as his book, he has published in academic journals, blogs, newspapers and contributed to British and Australian radio programmes. 

Will Barnes is a researcher at Royal Holloway studying the impact of homeworking, self-employment and creative work on wellbeing and mental health.

Bio: 

Fraser is a PhD candidate at King's College London interested in housing, urban popular economies, political ecology, postcolonial studies and critical urban theory. Previously, Fraser has worked in Dakar, Senegal with migrant property guardians researching their relationship to land, property, and the built environment. Elsewhere, he has written on young people's social infrastructures, sonic geographies, and creative and art-based methodologies. 

Research: 

Fraser's doctoral research explores migrant housing and the politics of inhabitation in Hounslow, West London. Broadly, his project examines the different, often contradictory, ways housing functions in migrant's everyday lives - as a space of shelter and belonging, locus of violence and risk, as an individual or collective possession, and/or an asset entangled in practices of saving and accumulating - and how these overlapping processes reshape social relations, conceptions of home, and political possibilities under contemporary capitalism.