White Rose ESRC Studentship at the University of Sheffield

STUDENTSHIP NETWORK: THE URBAN HOUSING EXPERIENCE IN THE AGE OF AUSTERITY

The White Rose Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York have made available three PhD studentships related to urban housing in the age of austerity. This interdisciplinary studentship network aims to develop PhD students with capacities for theorising and combining methodologies in research into the urban housing experience in an age of austerity which will affect its social, spatial and institutional contours. It responds to an urgent need for critical understandings of the dynamic, complex and contradictory interactions between the financial crisis at the global level, the national programme of public spending cuts, welfare reform and re-privatisation, and shifts in tenure, provision and occupation of housing at the local level. The network will promote and coordinate the interaction of students, supervisors and a wider academic group with a shared interest in housing and the urban experience.
The White Rose University Consortium is a strategic partnership between Yorkshire’s leading research universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York. Each university is offering a three-year Research Studentship for students with a Masters degree or equivalent experience to commence full-time PhD research study in Session 2013/14. Each student project will be supervised by two members of academic staff, one each from two of the partner universities. Students will register at one university but will have access to the research facilities of the partner institution and will be part of one research network which spans all three universities. The studentships provide Home/EU tuition fees and an annual maintenance grant of £13,726 (for 2013-14).

CITY LIVING AND SOCIAL CLASS: THE IMPACT OF WELFARE REFORM AND HOUSING RE-PRIVATISATION ON CLASS AND TENURE MIX IN CENTRAL URBAN AREAS

Supervisors:
Professor Sarah Blandy, School of Law, University of Sheffield
Dr Stuart Hodkinson, School of Geography, University of Leeds

This studentship will focus on how the housing crisis and austerity policies might interact to radically transform the class and tenure landscape of central urban housing areas in Northern UK cities. This focus is timely for two main reasons: first, because of the repossession wave affecting the private market for city centre apartments due to the changing financial conditions of buy to let mortgages that, prior to the 2008 credit crunch, had fuelled the so-called 'urban renaissance' of cities like Leeds and Sheffield; and second, due to the Coalition government’s deep cuts to housing benefit and its increasingly punitive policies towards social housing tenants and finance that suggest large-scale evictions and increased transiency. However, despite much political and academic debate about both these aspects of housing, there has been an absence of detailed socio-spatial and socio-legal analysis at the urban scale, apart from a few preliminary studies into the displacement effects of housing benefit cuts in London. This studentship addresses this gap, exploring what happens when these changes interact in city centre residential areas and producing empirical data on the (dis)similarities between the private and social rented sectors in terms of decreasing security of tenure, deregulation of rents, and welfare cuts, changing socio-economic, ethnic and other characteristics of urban residents and moves between private and social rented accommodation.

Objectives

• To identify and critically understand the nature and interconnectedness of government policy reforms, legislation and regulation affecting urban housing provision and governance, across the private rented and social rented sectors
• To explore the impact of these changes on the make-up and the experiences of ‘city living’ in differing Yorkshire cities, providing a basis for further comparison within the UK and internationally
• To develop a conceptual framework for understanding housing patterns affecting lower-income urban inhabitants in the age of austerity

Resources and facilities

The student will have access to the expertise of the wider network and be able to participate in seminars, conference and workshops run by relevant Research Clusters at both universities, for example the Centre for the Study of Law in Society and the Cities and Social Justice Cluster at Leeds. Research students will have access to their own research study space, with a workstation, printer access and secure storage. The student will undertake the regular taught post-graduate training programme based at Sheffield, in addition to any further training and support identified by their supervisory team. The student may attend any of the large number of free courses in personal and professional development at both institutions under the White Rose DTC. In addition the student could audit relevant modules available to undergraduate and postgraduate students in Law at Sheffield and Geography at Leeds. Doctoral students at Sheffield attend a course on Introduction to Frameworks for Legal Research; the Socio-Legal DTC Pathway holds a summer school each year for White Rose students; and valuable experience is gained from making presentations to staff and peers at the annual Sheffield School of Law Postgraduate Research event.

For any queries or for an informal discussion about this project please contact Sarah Blandy (s.blandy@sheffield.ac.uk) or Stuart Hodkinson (s.hodkinson@leeds.ac.uk)

How to apply

If you wish to apply for the White Rose studentship to undertake this PhD, you must first complete the University of Sheffield’s standard online application for PhD study form How to Apply for a Research Degree. Please provide an additional supporting statement in your application (300 words max), explaining why you wish to apply to the White Rose Scholarship, why this project is of interest to you and how undertaking this PhD ties in with your future career plans. You should also attach a Research Proposal (max 4 sides of A4) outlining how you would undertake the project. You must also complete an ESRC Scholarships Form.