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University appoints new director to lead housing policy research

Posted on 17 August 2011

The University of York has appointed Dr Rebecca Tunstall as Director of its Centre for Housing Policy.

Dr Tunstall, who will take up her post in October, has worked at LSE since 1994 and has been a Lecturer in Social Policy and a Research Associate in the LSE’s Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion.

She grew up in inner London, and after leaving school spent a year at Camberwell School of Art.  She then took a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University and an MA in Urban Design at Oxford Brookes University, before becoming involved in housing research.

Dr Tunstall joined the Department of Social Policy at LSE in 1994, as research assistant on a Joseph Rowntree Foundation funded project on social housing estates. Her PhD assessed the potential for greater public involvement in social policy through the example of tenant management organisations.

From 1997 to 2003, she was course tutor for the MSc/Diploma in Housing at LSE, teaching students from across the world, and arranging placements with social landlords. In 2003/04 she worked at the Metropolitan Center at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC comparing UK and US cities.

Dr Tunstall has carried out research on behalf of the Department of Communities and Local Government, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Nuffield Foundation, the Housing Corporation, the Homes and Communities Agency, the Tenant Services Authority, the National Housing Federation, the Scottish Government, and individual social landlords.

Her research projects often combine quantitative and qualitative methods and longitudinal elements, and use methods from time-interval photography to analysis of large-scale datasets and covert experiments.

She has served on boards and advisory groups for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Town and Country Planning Association, Sanctuary Housing Association,  and the Local Government Association.

In her spare time, she is a keen runner, traveller and printmaker, and a novice breadmaker.

Dr Tunstall said: “I am very much looking forward to joining CHP, to new collaborations there, and to helping to advance CHP’s important contribution to British housing policy and housing studies.”

She takes over from Professor Suzanne Fitzpatrick.

Notes to editors:

Contact details

David Garner
Senior Press Officer

Tel: +44 (0)1904 322153

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