Dr Richard Lang and Thea Raisbeck have been appointed as Honorary Research
Fellows at the University of Birmingham. Both Richard and Thea will continue to
make a significant contribution to the Housing and Communities Research Group
(HCRG) in the Centre for Household Assets and Savings Management (CHASM).

Dr Richard Lang is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Innovation Management (IFI) at Johannes Kepler University Linz where he previously held an APART-fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.  He was also a Marie Curie Research Fellow in the School of Social Policy at University of Birmingham.  Richard’s current research interests include collaborative and cooperative housing, social innovation and sustainability transitions in housing, and the role of social enterprises in urban and regional development. Richard is a coordinator of the ENHR working group on Collaborative Housing and has strong links to the working group on Social Housing Institutions, Organisations and Governance.  Over the next two years, Richard will contribute his expertise of qualitative case study research to HCRG research activities to CHASM, based around tenure, wellbeing and mixed communities.

Thea Raisbeck is a Research and Best Practice Lead for the Spring Housing Association.  She has worked in the housing, homelessness and domestic abuse sectors for over a decade and combines academic and frontline practice with campaigning and advocacy work.  During her two year honorary fellowship, Thea will continue to build upon the interest generated by her research into exempt accommodation. She also intends to publish two new research reports and journal articles on homelessness and exempt accommodation in collaboration with Commonweal Housing and Women’s Aid.