Dr Hannah Absalom worked in the English social housing sector for 18 years before undertaking her ESRC-funded PhD examining the use of behavioural insights in social housing. Her research interests can be broadly described as the application of relational frameworks and ideas in housing policy and practice. She has undertaken two ESRC IAA-funded research projects. Understanding home as an emotional place, firstly from the perspective of practitioners, with the second grant exploring the same topic with tenants residing in social homes. She is currently undertaking an ESRC Fellowship to write three papers from her thesis and undertake further research with tenants and practitioners called ‘Home Encounters’. This project examines how landlord representatives ‘meet’ tenants in the tenant’s home. The research seeks to draw out the emotional aspects of this engagement, contributing to emotionally informed policy research and making recommendations for how such home encounters can be better experiences for tenants and practitioners. She is leaning further towards Participatory Action Research methods as seeks a grounding in her research for what matters for tenants about their experiences of home and landlord services. She is also interested in studying home-based technologies, or ‘proptech’ through relational frameworks, and is seeking research funding to examine the use of sensor technology in the homes of general needs tenants.
Her focus on housing and interest in relational and emotionally informed policy-making has drawn her to the Centre of Care. This is because there are synergies in terms of exploring relational and emotionally informed practices. For example, the transition between a care environment, such as supported living, to general needs accommodation. Furthermore, in part, due to Hannah’s impact on working with the social housing sector, psychologically and emotionally informed ideas are starting to inform housing practice. This provides a great opportunity for new research.
Research interests
- Understanding home as an emotional place and shaping policy and practice through this perspective.
- The relational effects of home-based technologies.
- Co-production and participatory methods.
- Emotionally informed policymaking.
- Relational theories, with a leaning towards assemblage theory.
Publications
Absalom, H (2023). Rethinking Regulated Housing in England: Home as an Emotional Place. TAROE Trust and the Centre for Urban Wellbeing. https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/centre-urban-wellbeing/publications/publications.aspx
Absalom, H (2023). Feeling at Home: Changing the Story of Domestic Abuse. TAROE Trust and the Centre for Urban Wellbeing. https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/documents/college-les/gees/centre-urban-wellbeing/taroe-trust-feeling-at-home-v6.pdf
Absalom, H (2023). Sensors in tenants’ homes. Arbitrating Truth or reinforcing bias? Blog piece in response to research by the University of York. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sensors-tenants-homes-arbitrating-truth-reinforcing%3FtrackingId=8wBCZQHF6R4OK%252FeipbqKSQ%253D%253D/?trackingId=8wBCZQHF6R4OK%2FeipbqKSQ%3D%3D
The Word Association (2023). Tales from the Red Shed. A collection of stories from a storytelling workshop for the Birmingham Resettlement Project Summer Festival.