2024 PhD Project
About The Project
Whilst the academic literature provides insight into housing activism, e.g. Gray, 2018, and histories of black
activism, especially in the US context, e.g. KASRP, 2014, there is a significant gap in the academic literature and local black archives tracing and accounting the rich history of black social housing activism. Such a gap
diminishes the voice and experience of racialised and minoritized groups within the UK, which in-turn
perpetuates modalities and structures of oppression. Without a recounting of such important enactment, we run the risk of history being repeated or the reinvention of already initiated and innovative activity.
Nottingham like many UK cities is experiencing a cost-of-living crisis which is having a devastating impact on
people’s living standards and housing security, where the Office for National Statistics (2021) account for Black people being four times more likely to experience homelessness than White people. In such a predicament collective action and housing activism become important activities to challenge social structures that perpetuate inequality. This project will engage community partners in the area of housing and other associate services, with the academic community, to learn from past activism to aid such a challenge.
The project will make connections with regional partners such as Nottingham Black Archive, East Midlands Oral History Archive, to archive key information that will be of importance to the public domain. It will also facilitate knowledge exchange with important national and local housing and civic society stakeholders, such as BME National, National Housing Federation, Chartered Institute of Housing, ROTA, SHELTER, Strategic Housing Network, Framework and Emmanuel House, to ensure that interpretations of the challenges to achieving a social justice approach to housing and solutions can be shared across key networks to inform the sector.
This project is a means of making an important contribution to fill such a void, to capture the oral histories of important housing activists, new and old, to also include the recollected stories of those that are no longer with us. The research project will work with local archivists, charities, centres of learning and community partners to capture and share such knowledge. The knowledge to be co-constructed is to also consider its sociological and political implications, to consider the importance of housing as a social strand that provides a significant contribution to life-history and opportunity. Such knowledge is to inform policy, pedagogy, archives and practice in the region and beyond.
This project has been co-created and is supported by researchers from Nottingham Trent University, the University of Nottingham, and partners at Tun Tum Housing Association. The successful candidate will be enrolled at Nottingham Trent University.
Project Aims
The overall aims of this project are:
- Investigate the history of Black social housing activism in Nottingham.
- Capture the oral histories of important, previously unaccounted players at a time of significant change in the UK (post war period)through to the 21st century
- Develop critical scrutiny of the implications of such knowledge for future literature, policy and practice.
The Project Team
- PhD Candidate: Henri Clarke-Baptiste, NTU
- Lead Academic Supervisor: Dr Ricky Gee, NTU
- Academic Co-Supervisor: Dr Cath Williams, UoN
- Community Supervisor: Richard Renwick, Tun Tum Housing Association