Dr Richard Lang

• PhD in Socioeconomics, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, with a semester at KU Leuven (2012)
• Masters in Economics and Business, Johannes Kepler University Linz (2004)

In his recent Marie Curie Fellowship project, Richard examined the (re-)emergence of collaborative and community-led housing models in England and Austria, such as Housing Co-operatives, Community Land Trusts, Self-help Housing and Co-housing. The study focused on the ability of these housing models to scale up local impact and influence mainstream housing practices. The research was co-funded by an APART-fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. 

Richard first joined the University of Birmingham in 2013 as a William Plowden Research Fellow within the Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC), co-funded by the National Council of Voluntary Organisations (NCVO). In his Plowden fellowship, he explored the potential that co-operative housing governance offers for effective localism and sustainable community building. 

Previously, Richard was a Senior Researcher at the Research Institute for Co-operation and Co-operatives, and Assistant Professor at the Institute for Small Business Management and Entrepreneurship at WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria. 

Apart from collaborative housing, Richard’s research interests further include social enterprises and social innovation in urban and regional development. Richard has carried out and coordinated several research and knowledge transfer projects in these fields, such as on the role of co-operative housing for social cohesion, funded by the City of Vienna (2011-2013). 

He has published several contributions to international conferences and peer-reviewed journals, such as European Planning Studies, International Small Business Journal, Journal of Rural Studies, Technological Forecasting and Social Change and Voluntas.

• Sectors and Services in British Social Policy 2016/17
• Housing and Communities: Issues in Housing Policy 2014/15, 2015/16, 2016/17, Social Policy BA

• Update of the mapping of social enterprises and their eco-system in Europe”, European Commission (DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion), 2017-2019
• Empowering the next generation of social enterprise scholars, Horizon 2020 COST Action, 2017-2021   
• RurAction – Social Entrepreneurship in Structurally Weak Rural Regions: Analysing Innovative Troubleshooters in Action (Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie ITN Action)
• Co-operative Capital: The governance capacity of co-operative and community-led housing Marie Curie Fellowship, EU (2015-2017) 
• Linking Social Capital: A Multi-Scalar Approach to the Governance Capacity of Cooperatives APART-fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2014-2018)
• International Comparative Social Enterprise Models - ICSEM (2013-2017)
• Bringing real localism into practice through co-operative housing governance William Plowden Fellowship, NCVO (2013) 

Contributions to and Convenorships at International Conferences with Peer-Review (since 2015)

• Debates around 'caring' in collaborative housing: Evidence from the literature (with Czischke, D., Carriou, C.), European Network of Housing Research (ENHR) Conference, Uppsala, Sweden, 26.-29.06.2018
• Collaborative Housing (with Czischke, D., Carriou, C.), Workshop Convenorship at European Network of Housing Research ENHR Conference, Uppsala, Sweden, 26.-29.06.2018
• Collaborative Housing (with Czischke, D., Carriou, C.), Workshop Convenorship at European Network of Housing Research ENHR Conference, Tirana, Albania, 04.-06.09.2017
•  Collaborative housing research (1990–2015): A systematic review and thematic analysis of the field (with Carriou, C., Czischke, D.), European Network of Housing Research (ENHR) Conference, Tirana, Albania, 04.-06.09.2017
• Linking social capital in (re-)gaining legitimacy of non-profit organizational models: The case of community-led housing in England (with Kibler, E., Mullins, D.), 33rd EGOS Colloquium, Copenhagen, Denmark, 06.-08.07.2017
• Cooperative Social Enterprises in western industrialized countries (with Göler von Ravensburg, N., Poledrini, S., Starnawska, M.), 6th EMES International Research Conference on Social Enterprise, Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium, 03.-06.07.2017
• Critical Perspectives on Alternate Models of Entrepreneurial Organising Social Innovation and the De-Growth economy (with Claeyé, F., Dey, P., Teasdale, S.), Stream Convenorship at the 9th International Conference in Critical Management Studies (CMS), Liverpool, UK, 03.-05.07.2017
• The co-operative identity of collaborative housing models in Austria, 16^th International Conference on Cooperative Studies (IGT/ICCS), Lucerne, Switzerland, 14.-16.9.2016
• Social Enterprise Models in Austria: A contextual approach to understand an ambiguous concept (with Anastasiadis, M.), 12th International Conference of the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR), Stockholm, Sweden, 28.06.-01.07.2016
• The power of vertical intermediaries: Introducing a multi-level network perspective to research on collaborative housing (with Mullins, D.), European Network for Housing Research (ENHR) Conference, Belfast, UK, 28.06.-01.07.2016
• How to be affordable without being cheap: Social innovations as an imperative for affordable housing (with Gruber, E.), European Network for Housing Research (ENHR) Conference, Belfast, UK, 28.06.-01.07.2016
• Social entrepreneurs as change agents in regional development: The role of linking social capital (with Fink, M.), Regional Studies Association (RSA) Annual Conference, Graz, Austria, 03.-06.04.2016
• The Role of Partnerships in Community-led Housing in England (with Sacranie, H.), 7th International Conference on Economics and Management of Networks (EMNet), Cape Town, South Africa, 03.-05.12.2015
• Co-operative Housing Governance and Social Capital Building: The Case of Vienna, (with Jones, T.), 7th International Conference on Economics and Management of Networks (EMNet), Cape Town, South Africa, 03.-05.12.2015
• Community-led housing in England: The emergence of a field? (with Mullins, D.), International Sociological Association, Research Committee on Housing and the Built Environment Conference (RC43), Chicago, IL, USA, 17.-19.9.2015
• Exploring Civil Society, Voluntary and Not-For-Profit Organisations as a Crucible for Creative Alternative, Democratic Imaginaries (with King, D, Claeyé, F., Eikenberry, A., Maier, F., Schwabenland, C., Tomlinson, F., Hull, R.), Stream Convenorship at the 9th International Conference in Critical Management Studies (CMS), University of Leicester, UK, 07.-10.07.2015
• The role of the local institutional context in understanding community-led housing models (with Stoeger, H.), European Network for Housing Research (ENHR) Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, 28.06.-01.07.2015 

Invited Talks

• Organiser and (Plenary) Speaker at the conference Hope for Housing – the rebirth of Community-Led Housing, University of Birmingham, UK, July 9^th, 2018
• Speaker at Research Seminar of the Department of Entrepreneurship and Relationship Management, University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Social Innovations in Structurally Weak Rural Regions: How Social Entrepreneurs Address Social Challenges, (with Fink, M.), Kolding, Denmark, March 19th, 2018.
• Speaker at Housing and Communities Research Group (HCRG) Network Seminar Collaborative Housing and the Mobilisation of Linking Social Capital: findings from an international study, University of Birmingham, UK, January 16^th, 2017
• Speaker at Research Seminar of the Faculty of Behavioural, Management & Social Sciences (NIKOS), University of Twente, Understanding the emergence and dynamics of social enterprise fields: The case of community-led housing in England, Enschede, The Netherlands, November 15^th, 2016.
• Speaker at Architectural Institute of Japan, Collaborative Housing and Social Capital: A Comparative Study between England and Austria, Tokyo, Japan, 23.10.2017
• Speaker at workshop series Tenant Involvement in Governance – where next for Northern Ireland?, The Austrian Model: Building participation into the development process Workshops on Tenant Involvement in Governance – where next for Northern Ireland?, Ballymena, Northern Ireland, October 19^th 2016, and October 20^th, 2016, Belfast Castle, Northern Ireland.
• Invited Speaker at Future of Social Housing Conference, How Vienna's Developer Competition stimulates innovation and collaborative housing, International Convention Centre (ICC), Birmingham, UK, June 6th 2016.
• Invited Speaker at the 22nd Annual Conference of the Confederation of Co-operative Housing, Enabling Social Innovations in Co-operative Housing: Sharing Experiences from Vienna, University of Loughborough, UK, May 13th 2016.
• Invited Speaker at the ESRC Seminar Series Ways of Neighbourhood Knowing and Working, Collaborative housing and community building: The Austrian experience, University of Bristol, UK, April 22nd 2016.
• Speaker at Lord Ashcroft International Business School, Anglia Ruskin University, Real Localism Through Co-operative Governance? The Role and Prospects for Community-led Housing in England, Cambridge, UK, April 27^th, 2015
• Speaker at ESRC Seminar Series The Big Society, Localism and Housing Policy, “Co-operative housing in Austria: social innovation 'from above'”, University of St Andrews, UK, March 13^th, 2014.
• William Plowden Fellowship Lecture, Bringing real localism into practice through co-operative housing governance: The role and prospects of community-led housing in England, Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre, London, UK, September 12^th, 2013.
• Speaker at Housing and Communities Research Group (HCRG) Seminar Series Putting the social back into Housing - learning from Localism, “Linking Social Capital in Housing Cooperatives: The Case of Vienna”, University of Birmingham, UK, May 7^th, 2013.