My research program asks how cities can equitably support life and the practice of care through studies of housing systems and governance, urban planning and cultures of home. I am motivated by an interest in what makes cities liveable and am driven by concerns about the implications of growing urban and housing inequity, the residualisation of social welfare systems in western liberal welfare states and urban liveability in changing climates.
I live and work in Sydney’s western suburbs and Blue Mountains. These are places with lived experience of social difference, facing growing urban and economic development pressures, growing housing affordability challenges and the escalating impacts of climate change including urban heat and bushfire. Living here informs the work I do.
I am an urban cultural geographer in the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) and School of Social Sciences at Western Sydney University. With Stephen Healy I co-lead the Urban Futures research program within the ICS. The Urban Futures Research Program is geared toward the production of hopeful, caring and just urban futures, drawing on interdisciplinary insights to identify the conditions that make urban areas and regions flourish. Members are committed to engaged research, working across the profit and not-for-profit, government and non-government, and international governance sectors to bring impactful change to urban areas and regions where we live and work.