Dr Stuart Hodkinson

Profile

Dr Stuart Hodkinson is an Associate Professor in Critical Urban Geography. His main research examines the political economy of social housing with a focus on the politics, policies and lived experiences of housing privatisation, urban regeneration and state-led gentrification. Stuart has been a campaigning academic for over 20 years, working with tenants and residents organisations, campaigners, NGOs, lawyers, politicians, civil servants, and other stakeholders on issues of housing and urban justice both in the UK and internationally. He has over 60 publications, including the acclaimed book, Safe as Houses Private Greed, Political Negligence and Housing Policy After Grenfell (2019, Manchester University Press). Stuart centres social justice issues at the heart of his undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, and has supervised 10 PhD students to successful completion. He recently served as an acdemic commissioner on the Manchester Social Housing Commission (2024-25), working with a range of organisations to provide both the evidence and mechanisms to achieve a rapid increase in the supply of sustainable homes for social rent.

Previous posts

• 2011-2016 Lecturer, School of Geography, University of Leeds
• 2007-2011 British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Geography, University of Leeds
• 2005-2007 ESRC Research Fellow on ESRC Autonomous Geographies: Activism and Everyday Life in the City, based in the Schools of Geography at the Universities of Leeds and Leicester.
• 2003-2005 Associate Editor, Red Pepper magazine

Research interests

Stuart’s main research interest is the political economy of social housing with a focus on the politics, policies and lived experiences of housing privatisation, urban regeneration and state-led gentrification. After completing his PhD in 2004 on trade unionism and the new labour internationalism, Stuart joined the School of Geography as a postdoctoral research fellow, working with Professors Paul Chatterton and Jenny Pickerill on the ESRC project, Autonomous Geographies: Activism and Everyday Life in the City, critically exploring and supporting the ideas, struggles and practices of autonomous social movements in the UK. It was during this project that Stuart began to investigate community experiences of housing regeneration, which led to a 20 year action research engagement with housing and urban justice issues both in the UK and internationally.

Specific projects he has led include: Public housing regeneration under the Private Finance Initiative (ESRC, 2011-2014), Exploring Digital Transformations of Community, Culture and Welfare in Austere Times (EPSRC, 2014-2015), and High-rise and acceptable risk after Grenfell (Research England, 2020-21). Stuart has also gained a track record in undertaking international comparative research on housing as lead supervisor on two EU Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships – Post-crisis urban transformations in Athens and Barcelona (2019-21) and Short-term rentals and housing financialisation (2021-23).

Most recently, Stuart was Principal Investigator on the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account-funded project, The Manchester Social Housing Commission: Supporting Community Engagement in the Planning System (2024-25), an 18-month collaboration with local housing providers, tenants’ groups and Manchester City Council, to develop the case and policy framework needed for a new generation of social rent housing with local partnerships and ecological sustainability at its heart. As a follow up project to the Commission, Stuart is leading a collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority to develop a prototype online Social Housing Data Dashboard, funded by the Healthy and Sustainable Places Data Service.

Stuart has over 60 publications, including the acclaimed books, Safe as Houses Private Greed, Political Negligence and Housing Policy After Grenfell (2019, Manchester University Press), and the co-authored Precarious Lives: Forced Labour, Exploitation and Asylum (2014, Policy Press). He has published a range of research in peer-reviewed journals, including:

• Belotti E; Bortolotti A; Coppola A; Corcillo P; Cordini M; Hodkinson S; Watt P (2026) Re-tracing the rise of institutional investor landlords in London and Milan through the lens of state de-risking. European Urban and Regional Studies, 33(1): 48-65. http://doi.org/10.1177/09697764251384115
• Alexandri G; Hodkinson S (2026) Unpacking the complex role of the state in housing financialization, comparing Athens and Barcelona. European Urban and Regional Studies, 33(1): 97-115. http://doi.org/10.1177/09697764251324893
• Cocola-Gant A; Hodkinson SN; Janoschka M (2025) The financialisation of short-term rentals in Barcelona: Property ownership and the consolidation of a new asset class. European Urban and Regional Studies. http://doi.org/10.1177/09697764251361724
• Waugh MI; Hodkinson SN (2021) Examining the Effectiveness of Current Information Laws and Implementation Practices for Accountability of Outsourced Public Services. Parliamentary Affairs, 74, (2), pp. 253-275. http://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsaa001
• Hodkinson SN; Lewis H; Waite L; Dwyer P (2021) Fighting or fuelling forced labour? The Modern Slavery Act 2015, irregular migrants and the vulnerabilising role of the UK’s hostile environment. Critical Social Policy, 41, (1), pp. 68-90. http://doi.org/10.1177/0261018320904311
• Dwyer P; Hodkinson S; Lewis H; Waite L (2016) Socio-legal status and experiences of forced labour among asylum seekers and refugees in the UK. Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy, 32, (3), pp. 182-198. http://doi.org/10.1080/21699763.2016.1175961
• Beswick J; Alexandri G; Byrne M; Vives-Miró S; Fields D; Hodkinson S; Janoschka M (2016) Speculating on London's housing future: The rise of global corporate landlords in ‘post-crisis’ urban landscapes. City, 20, (2), pp. 321-341. http://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2016.1145946
• Alexandri G; González S; Hodkinson S (2016) Locating displacement in Latin American Urbanism. Revista Invi, 31, (88), pp. 9-25. https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/110892
• Lewis H; Dwyer P; Hodkinson S; Waite L (2015) Hyper-precarious lives: Migrants, work and forced labour in the Global North. Progress in Human Geography, 39, (5), pp. 580-600. http://doi.org/10.1177/0309132514548303
• Hodkinson S; Essen C (2015) Grounding accumulation by dispossession in everyday life: The unjust geographies of urban regeneration under the private finance initiative. International Journal of Law in the Built Environment, 7, (1), pp. 72-91. http://doi.org/10.1108/IJLBE-01-2014-0007
• Waite L; Lewis H; Dwyer P; Hodkinson S (2015) Precarious lives: Refugees and asylum seekers' resistance within unfree labouring. ACME, 14, (2), pp. 479-491. https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1176
• González S; Hodkinson S (2014) Gentrification and Public Policy in a provincial town. The case of the city of Leeds in the UK. Revista De Geografia Norte Grande, 58, (5-6), pp. 93-109. http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0718-34022014000200006
• Hodkinson S; Watt P; Mooney G (2013) Introduction: Neoliberal housing policy - time for a critical re-appraisal. Critical Social Policy, 33(1), pp. 3-16. http://doi.org/10.1177/0261018312457862
• Hodkinson S; Robbins G (2013) The return of class war conservatism? Housing under the UK Coalition Government. Critical Social Policy, 33, (1), pp. 57-77. http://doi.org/10.1177/0261018312457871
• Hodkinson SN (2012) The Return of the Housing Question. Ephemera: theory and politics in organization, 12, (4), pp. 423-444 (22). https://ephemerajournal.org/contribution/return-housing-question
• Hodkinson S (2012) The new urban enclosures. City, 16, (5), pp. 500-518. http://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2012.709403
• Hodkinson S (2011) Housing Regeneration and the Private Finance Initiative in England: Unstitching the Neoliberal Urban Straitjacket. Antipode, 43, (2), pp. 358-383. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00819.x
• Hodkinson S (2011) The Private Finance Initiative in English Council Housing Regeneration: A Privatisation too Far? Housing Studies, 26, (6), pp. 911-932. http://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2011.593133

Stuart has supervised 10 PhD students to successful completion.

• 2025 Hannatu Babajo, Neoliberal transparency governance, citizen auditing and environmental justice
• 2023 Jordi Gonzalez Guzman, Contesting the financialisation of Barcelona's rental housing market
• 2022 Timothy Joubert, In and against the local state: radical municipalism in the Greater London Council 1981-1986
• 2021 Samadhi Lipari, The making of ‘green’ capitalism in Europe's marginal regions: renewable energy production as territory grabbing for accumulation
• 2021 Joseph Beswick, Public rental housing after the global financial crisis: the emergence of financialised municipal entrepreneurialism in London
• 2019 Alice Butler, Tracing the formation of territorial stigma through the British media: The case of Toxteth, Liverpool
• 2018 Richard Goulding, Transforming social housing into an asset class: the financialisation of English housing associations under neoliberalism and austerity urbanism
• 2017 Ana Cabrera Pacheco The Maya solar of Yucatán: Transformations of land, livelihoods and identities in Peri-Urban settlements in Mexico
• 2016 Hui-Fang Liu, A critical analysis of culture-led urban regeneration policy in Taipei and beyond
• 2014 Thomas Gillespie, Accumulation by urban dispossession: Struggles over urban space in Accra, Ghana

Stuart has many research interests and is available to supervise PhD students on any of the following topics:

• Neoliberal urbanism
• Urban enclosures and commons
• Housing and urban regeneration policy
• Power and counter-power in cities
• Privatisation and biopolitical control of public space
• Gentrification and displacement
• Public-Private-Partnerships and the Private Finance Initiative
• Citizen auditing of public bodies and private companies
• Asylum, immigration and border controls
• Activism, social movements and autonomous politics

Primary investigator (PI)

• Public Housing Regeneration under the Private Finance Initiative

Co-investigator (Co-I)

• Communities in crisis (Connected Communities Scoping Studies and Reviews)
• Precarious lives: Asylum seekers and refugees' experiences of forced labour

Qualifications

• 2004 PhD School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds
• 1999 MA (Distinction) International Political Economy, University of Leeds
• 1998 BA (First Class) Economics and Politics, University of Leeds

Professional memberships

• Social Policy Association (UK)

Student education

Stuart teaches at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He was Programme Lead for BA Geography and related programmes (2016-2022) and believes passionately in a pedagogical approach that centres students as knowledge producers and issues of social and planetary justice in all his modules.

He currently teaches on the following modules:

• GEOG1460: The Urban Age
• GEOG2035: Geographies of Economies (Module lead)
• GEOG2022: Natural Hazards; Human Disasters
• GEOG3085: Contested Cities
• GEOG3125: Bilbao: Contested Urban Transformations
• FOEV5004M: City Systems: Sustainable Housing

He also supervises BA and MSc students undertaking human geography dissertations.

Research groups and institutes

• Social Justice, Cities, Citizenship