UQ-HAUS:
The University of Queensland Housing and Urban Studies Network (otherwise known as UQ HAUS) brings together over 60 researchers from around UQ to better understand the key issues in contemporary urban and housing policy, practice and research.
Established in 2013, the network is uniquely interdisciplinary, incorporating expertise from the disciplines of architecture, criminology, economics, geography, media studies, planning, sociology and social work. Our work is theoretically informed and pays attention to questions of mobility, inequality, power, governance and change as they relate to urban and housing matters. But our research is also of significant community and policy interest and our researchers are critically engaged in public debates.
Our mission is threefold:
- To foster research excellence among UQ’s housing and urban studies scholars by enhancing collaboration across disciplines; creating an intellectually stimulating environment to foster new ideas; and building the capacity of RHD students and early career researchers.
- To promote UQ’s expertise in urban and housing research in local national and international arenas.
- To provide a vehicle for external engagement and knowledge transfer by fostering stronger linkages with governments, business and communities in order to address global and local housing and urban challenges.
Our research strengths
2. Neighbourhood and Community
What goes on in our local neighbourhoods has profound importance for our sense of well-being, our attachment to place and home, and the opportunities available to us. At a broader level, neighbourhoods are spaces where inequality is highly visible as populations are ‘sifted and sorted’ into particular areas of the city by virtue of their class, ethnicity, lifestyle choices and other characteristics. Policymakers concerned about crime, disadvantage, resilience and social cohesion frequently target their interventions at the neighbourhood level on the assumption that neighbourhoods have their own causal dynamics and effects.
Our research examines, but also questions, the importance of neighbourhoods as our lives are said to be less locally bound. We pay attention to broader social, political and economic processes that shape our neighbourhoods, such as gentrification, economic restructuring and urban planning, as well as to the micro-encounters that take place between people who live near one another. Our work examines the effects of concentrated disadvantage and stigmatisation in low-income neighbourhoods; variations in crime and disorder across urban areas; the relationships and conflicts that arise between neighbours in different residential contexts; local forms of civic action, engagement and volunteering; and the effects of neighbourhood change.
Current and recent projects include the following:
- Barriers and facilitators of neighbourhood networks and cohesion’, J. Corcoran, R. Wickes and J. Hipp, ARC Discovery Project, 2015-2017.
- ‘Un-neighbourliness’: the nature, causes and outcomes of problems between neighbours and their implications for suburban life’, L. Cheshire and R. Fitzgerald, ARC Discovery Project, 2015-2017.
- ‘Addressing concentrations of disadvantage’ H. Pawson, K. Hulse, L. Cheshire, J. Corcoran and others, AHURI Multi-Year Research Project, 2011-2014.
- ‘What makes a community resilient? Examining changes in the adaptive capacities of Brisbane suburbs before and after the 2011 flood, R. Wickes, L. Cheshire, P. Walters, J. Corcoran, B. Raphael, M. Taylor and F. Norris, ARC Discovery Project, 2011-2014.
Our research specialist in this field include (a-z):
- Associate Professor Lynda Cheshire
- Dr Sébastien Darchen
- Dr Suzanna Fay-Ramirez
- Dr Kelly Greenop
- Dr Anthony Halog
- Dr Laurel Johnson
- Dr Chris Landorf
- Dr Iderlina Mateo-Babiano
- Hon. Assoc. Prof. John Minnery
- Dr Cameron Parsell Research Fellow
- Dr Naomi Stead
- Dr Peter Walters
Our PhD candidates in this field include:
- Angela Ballard
- Johanna Brugman Alvarez
- Anthony Kimpton
Contact Us
Lynda Cheshire (l.cheshire@uq.edu.au)
Laurel Johnson (l.johnson3@uq.edu.au)
Cameron Parsell (c.parsell@uq.edu.au)
Peter Walters (p.walters@uq.edu.au)
Anthony Kimpton (a.kimpton@uq.edu.au)