REP Research Roundup: February 2026

Departmental News

Symposium to discuss Neighbourhood Scale Planning

The Just Neighbourhoods research team, including Prof Gavin Parker and Dr Tessa Lynn from REP and Prof John Sturzaker(Herts), welcomed participants the near project-end symposium to discuss neighbourhood scale planning. This is part of a 2.5 year project @JustCLP  looking at how place planning activity is undertaken in more deprived areas across the  UK and NI. The day featured presentations about the research, a panel discussion chaired by Prof Sarah Pearson and bre akout rooms to explore how to ensure that planning helps shape and  inform decisions and actions that are thought through and just.

Two-Day International Workshop for Strengthening Transdisciplinary Research for Equitable and Adaptive Water Management in Latin America (STREAM)

Dr Claudia Murray form REP was co-organizer for the two-day international workshop supported by the Reading Latin American and Caribbean Network (R-LAC) bringing together leading researchers, practitioners and policy experts to discuss water security in the region due to climate change. For more information on the event visit Strengthening Transdisciplinary Research for Equitable and Adaptive Water Management in Latin America (STREAM) - Reading Latin America and the Caribbean network

Research Bids

Claire Deng – Real Estate Research Institute

• Title: Navigating Climate Risk and Green Investment in U.S. Commercial Real Estate: Socially Responsible Investment, Asset-Level Vulnerability, and Regulatory Variation
• Total bid: £10,200

Impact

The Henley Business School has just published, Leading Impact, summarising a some of the impactful research at the business school.

Showcased here is “The Just Neighbourhoods?” ​ research project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, and led by Prof Gavin Parker from Real Estate and Planning. It investigates how plans are developed in socio-economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods and aims to understand the dynamics of community-led planning and its impact on social and environmental justice with a focus on ‘left behind’ places. Key questions focus on representation, process design, policy focus and the added value of community-led planning in achieving equitable outcomes. More information on the research is here: https://research.reading.ac.uk/justclp/ 

Bhattacharya, D., Patel, S., Chettiparamb, A. and Acharya, S. (2025) Belonging without a deed: women, shelter, and structural power. In: Acharya, S. and Kale, R. K. (eds.) Diversity, Disparity and Discrimination in Access to Resources: Challenges of Not Leaving Anyone Behind. Springer, New Delhi. (In Press)

Abstract

This chapter examines how women in South Asia, India in particular, access and experience housing through the intertwined institutions of the family and the state. While both are often viewed as key enablers of shelter, they frequently function as gatekeepers, shaping women’s access to housing in ways that reinforce patriarchal norms and restrict autonomy. The chapter argues that women’s relationship to housing cannot be understood outside the socio-legal frameworks of kinship, marriage, inheritance, and citizenship that mediate their right to occupy, own, or inherit space. Within the family, women’s access to housing is often contingent—dependent on marital status, birth order, or relationships with male relatives. The ideology of the patrilineal home, the pressure to marry, and practices such as dowry or virilocal residence patterns reinforce the idea that women move through homes rather than belong to them. Even when legal reforms grant inheritance rights or joint titles, the translation of rights into practice is mediated by family norms that continue to devalue women’s rights. The state is often presented as a neutral guarantor of rights. Yet, housing and land policies frequently reproduce gender bias—whether through the assumption of the male head of household, the absence of marital property regimes, or a limited recognition of informal housing arrangements where many low-income women live. Despite constitutional guarantees and policy frameworks that appear gender-neutral, the state often mirrors and reinforces the patriarchal assumptions of the family. Drawing on feminist thought, this chapter positions housing not merely as a material asset, but as a site of gendered power and struggle. It calls for a reimagining of both family and state structures to recognize women’s right to secure, autonomous shelter—not as dependents, but as citizens and rights-holders in their own right.

Murray, C., Vergara, L., Zingoni, J. M. and de la Cal Martin-Retortillo, A. (2026) Translating Community Land Trusts: institutional barriers and stakeholder sense-making in Argentina and Chile. Housing Policy Debate (In Press)

Abstract

This paper investigates the potential for Community Land Trust (CLT) adoption in two Latin American contexts: Bahía Blanca, Argentina, and Temuco, Chile, where housing systems are shaped by neoliberal legacies, legal centralism, and cultural attachments to individual ownership. Drawing on two multi-stakeholder focus groups where participants were largely unfamiliar with the CLT model, the findings capture a crucial early stage of sense-making in which stakeholders interpret, negotiate, and localise the concept of collective landholding. Applying a multi-theoretical framework combining structuration theory, institutional planning, and agency typologies, the paper reveals how institutional constraints, discursive imaginaries, and actor strategies shape the (im)possibility of CLTs. While Argentine stakeholders identified pragmatic opportunities to adapt legal and financial instruments for collective tenure, Chilean participants expressed cultural and institutional scepticism rooted in strong individualist land values. The findings highlight the importance of context-sensitive policy imaginaries and institutional agency in advancing tenure innovation. The paper contributes to housing debates by revealing how cultural norms and actor strategies shape the initial buy-in and translation of CLTs within existing understandings of land, housing, and ownership.

Parker, G., Dobson, M. Lyons, M., (2025) Timelining the pipeline: housing development end to end. Report. University of Reading.

Parker, G. and Wargent, M. (2025) Realising social justice at the neighborhood scale. In: Silverman, R. (ed.) The Handbook of Urban Planning and Social Justice. de Gruyter, Berlin. (In Press)

Abstract
This chapter focuses on the potential of neighborhood scale planning activity to help address questions of social justice, in particular drawing on recent experience in England. Our contention is that recognition of (in)justice is heavily influenced by scale and may be transliterated more effectively via hyper-local activity. As such we argue for greater understanding of how (in)justice is understood, recognized, and wrought at the hyper-local scale, with particular attention paid to how forms of representational and recognitional justice can be achieved in and through plans (cf. Lefebvre, 1991 / 1974; Brinkley and Wagner, 2022; Fraser, 1995; Fincher and Iveson, 2008). To do this we relate the experience of formalized Neighbourhood Planning in England since 2011. This focus seems apposite given ongoing debates over decentralization and localism in many nation states globally (Hartwich, 2013; Katz and Nowak, 2018), as well as longer-running efforts to target regeneration policy (Harris and Johnstone, 2003; Pinnegar, 2009; MHCLG, 2025). From this position we seek to build from practical discoveries of injustice as they relate dialectically with local and national scales. We do not seek to add to the substantial theoretical literature on social justice here but rather point towards the inscriptive power of plans and ask how these can perpetuate injustice, or otherwise act to highlight and propose action in relation to matters of spatial (in)justice (Brinkley and Wagner, 2022; Loh and Kim, 2021; Wagenaar, 2014; Connell, 2010; Baer, 1997; Forester, 1982).

Liu, N and Zhao, Y. (2026) Signal herding and contrarianism in REITs - dissemination of stock vs fixed income factors. Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting. (In Press)

Abstract

Herding and contrarian behaviours in financial markets have drawn significant attention due to their potential to distort prices. In the Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) market, both behaviours have been observed, though explanations often remain anecdotal. This paper provides further insights into herding and contrarianism in US equity REITs by analysing their inherent characteristics and the impact of exogenous informational signals. Our findings reveal frequent and prolonged contrarian behaviour, contrasted with sporadic and brief herding episodes at both the market and sub-sector levels. Our results highlight the dual nature of REITs, where return dispersions differ inherently between their stock and fixed-income characteristics. Moreover, information spillovers from the stock and debt markets, as well as signals from larger REITs, drive distinct investor behaviours. We also observe that herding tendencies increase when investors shift capital from the stock market and that excess return dispersion intensifies during recessions, reflecting a heightened reliance on private information in times of crisis.

Publications

Wylie, A. (2026) “You should be able to eat that meal and feel like someone cares”: community food carers, good food, and the emergence of food-aid mutualism during Covid-19. Geoforum. 170.

Abstract

Austerity policies in the UK have fostered a ‘foodbank society’ by reducing state support and normalising reliance on charitable aid and poor-quality food. As a result, individuals’ physical, emotional, and mental relationships with food are being reshaped. This paper draws upon on geographies of mutual aid and care and the visceral framework in food geographies, to examine the improvised community foodwork that emerged in Manchester during the Covid-19 pandemic. Using qualitative interviews and participatory foodwork in a local food bank, I show how community food workers reintroduced good food into emergency food provision by attending to dignity, agency and sensory pleasure rather than prioritising scarcity and functionality. At the same time, I found that these practices also supported the food workers own emotional wellbeing during the uncertainty surrounding lockdown events. Whilst this foodwork forged reciprocal affective relations, it also sits in an ambivalent political space shaped by welfare retreat, is vulnerable to neoliberal co-optation and is also over-reliant on unpaid gendered and racialised labour. I therefore conceptualise this convergence of material and affective care as food mutualism, a form of reciprocal nourishment that emerges through foodwork and both challenges and reproduces the inequalities produced by austerity. By engaging with both the political stakes of mutualism and viscerality this work provides insight into how community-based food aid might be reimagined beyond the neoliberal foodbank model in ways that centre dignity, reciprocity, and sensory pleasure.

Wylie, A., & Goodman, M. K. (2026). Exploring the Everyday Feminist Geographies of the Anthro-No-Pause: Vernacular Labour, Burdens and the (In)visible Spaces of Women’s Foodwork During Covid-19. Gender, Place and Culture. In Press.

PhD Vivas

Ernest Adu

Title:  “ Institutions, Narratives, and the ‘landing’ of Capital: Exploring Cross-Border Real Estate Development in Ghana”

Supervisors: Pat McAllister and Ed Shepherd.