International Research Network on Housing, Ethnicity and Policy
This network has been set up to facilitate exchanges of ideas and information between scholars and researchers in different countries. It is multi-disciplinary, but its participants are brought together through their shared interests at the interface between policy debates, ethnic relations and housing or neighbourhoods research.
The idea for IRNHEP developed from discussions amongst housing scholars in Europe and North America in 2004/2005. There are currently about thirty members, including senior scholars, mid-career academics and new researchers. Malcolm Harrison from the School of Sociology and Social Policy at Leeds is currently convenor for the network, and will be happy to hear from any further researchers who would like to participate or have more information.
At the present stage of development, we would be especially glad to hear from more people from European Union countries other than the UK, or from the USA. The network also seeks to include some professionals with direct interest in this field through their activities as policy-makers, implementors or research sponsors.
We envisage two stages of development for the next two to three years.
Aims for Stage 1
- To assemble information about members' research activities and key areas of interest, and to make this material accessible in a systematic way.
- To help provide a stronger base from which some participants subsequently may link up with each other to create new comparative research and analysis, or exchange ideas and materials.
- To put particularly strong emphasis on countries that are confronting or involved with fairly similar issues, and share some similarities in institutional, legal economic and political environments. Thus the plan for this stage is to concentrate primarily on Europe (broadly defined) and North America, although with a welcome extended to people from other places who would like to join the network.
- To make links with other scholarly research networks for purposes of collaboration and the sharing of information.
Aims for Stage 2
- To create, and make available, systematic multi-country annotated bibliographies of key recent texts, drawing on the expert knowledge of IRNHEP participants, and focusing on specific selected themes important in Europe and North America.
- To generate or participate in international gatherings that would bring together expertise on particular key topics such as integration.
- To facilitate comparative analyses and publications: such as edited transatlantic collections, reports from international meetings etc.
- To begin to build connections with countries outside Europe and North America by enlarging the participating membership.
For practical reasons, communication is generally in English. However, this does not mean that any publications arising through IRNHEP contacts will necessarily be in English.
In order to protect IRNHEP's standing as a non-political and scholarly organisation, it may be necessary to exclude from its membership anyone who seeks to incite racist or religious hatred, or who appears to have no genuine positive or significant connection with research, policy or implementation.
Publications
- "The Most Segregated City in America": City Planning and Civil Rights in Birmingham, 1920-1980
by Charles E. Connerly.
Published by the University of Virginia Press in association with the Center for American Places. - Integration, Segregation, Housing and Public Policies: International Perspectives and the Development of New Research
Report from an International Day Workshop held at Weetwood Hall, Leeds, UK, September 2006.
Network Director
Professor Malcolm Harrison
University of Leeds
LS2 9JT
Tel: 0113 343 4430.
Email: m.l.harrison