Dr Joanne Bretherton
Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor)

Profile

Biography

• BA Hons Sociology (York)
• MA (Distinction) Applied Social Research (in Japan via Westminster)
• PhD (York)

Joanne is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Social Policy and Criminal Justice based in the School for Business and Society who joined the University of York in 2005. Until 2021 Joanne was a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Housing Policy. She is an interdisciplinary researcher whose core interests in homelessness include both theoretical and impact-driven research and writing on the gender dynamics of trajectories through homelessness and the intersections between domestic abuse and homelessness. She has published widely on homelessness and her recent publications include the Routledge Handbook of Homelessness. Joanne has been involved, as a Principle Investigator and Co-Investigator in over forty externally funded research projects, including a series of projects centred on the Housing First model. 

At European level, Joanne has worked with FEANTSA, the European Federation of Homelessness Organisations, and earlier in her career was Co-Director of the Women’s Homelessness in Europe Network (WHEN) which she helped establish and which produced the 2016 edited collection Women’s Homelessness in Europe (Springer). Joanne has longstanding links with Japan and has been involved in series of collaborations, research visits and joint publications with colleagues across Japan.

Research

Overview

Research interests

• Homelessness and housing precarity.
• Gender dimensions of homelessness.
• Gender inequalities in housing and the intersections with domestic abuse and health. 
• The links between housing inequalities and criminal justice 

Joanne is currently leading the Policing Housing Precarity and Homelessness (PHRASE) project as part of her role in the ESRC Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre.

For a full list of research projects, publications and external activity please see Dr Bretherton’s profile in the York Research Database (Pure).

Teaching

Other teaching

Joanne teaches across a range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules in SBS that focus on housing, social policy, inequalities and criminal justice and research methods.

Joanne currently convenes the modules Criminal Justice and Inequality CJI  and the Independent Study Module ISM.

Joanne is a Fellow of Advance HE (FHEA).

PHD Supervision

Current PhD Students:

Sian Broadhurst – ‘Lessons from New Earswick: social mix, governmentality and community cohesion in a garden village’

Sanjay Paul – ‘Reimagining systems for social impact monitoring in public policy’

Thesis advisor:

Corinna MacFarlane - ‘Seeking connection: Understanding multiply disadvantaged women’s experiences of community using participatory arts-based research’