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Prof Katherine Brickell

@kbrickell.bsky.social

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Prof Katherine Brickell @kbrickell.bsky.social · 5d

Published today on #WorldHomelessDay: my book Debt Trap Nation – a deep dive into how government policy is driving families into homelessness & debt.

All royalties to @seacharity.bsky.social 💜

Families aren't failing. They're being failed.

📖 www.agendapub.com/page/detail/...

#DebtTrapNation

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Reposted by Stephen P. Jenkins, Mel Bartley, Simon Wren‐Lewis , and 2 more Stephen P. Jenkins, Mel Bartley, Simon Wren‐Lewis, Ralf Martin, Katherine Brickell

Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 13h

A much needed corrective by @chrisgiles.ft.com to the "welfare is out of control" narrative, drawing on research by my colleague @benbgeiger.bsky.social

www.ft.com/content/ee67...

No need for a moral panic about the welfare system

It’s far from perfect, but the UK’s spending is broadly controlled and employment is high

www.ft.com

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Reposted by Katherine Brickell

Shared Health Foundation @sharedhealthgm.bsky.social · 14h

What an amazing evening with @kbrickell.bsky.social & Dr Mel Nowicki celebrating the launch of "Debt trap nation".

A remarkable piece of writing addressing the root causes of child poverty and homelessness, and the impact of systemic failures on vulnerable families.

debt-trap-nation.org/book

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Reposted by Katherine Brickell

Stuart Elden @stuartelden.bsky.social · 1d

David Harvey, The Story of Capital: What Everyone Should Know About How Capital Works - @versobooks.bsky.social, February 2026
www.versobooks.com/en-gb/produc...

The Story of Capital

For decades, David Harvey has been teaching Marx's work, particularly Capital, to great acclaim. He has analysed chapter by chapter - sometimes line-by-line - Marx's three volumes and the Grundrisse. ...

www.versobooks.com

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Reposted by Katherine Brickell, Sarah Hall

Infrastructural Geographies @infrastructuralgeo.bsky.social · 2d

Debt Trap Nation: Family Homelessness in a Failing State: @kbrickell.bsky.social (@kingscollegelondon.bsky.social) and Mel Nowicki (Oxford Brookes) as part of the Infrastructural Geographies Michaelmas 2025 Seminar Series on the 22nd October, 16:00-17:30 in the Small Lecture Theatre. All welcome!

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Reposted by Katherine Brickell

Cambridge Geography @camunigeography.bsky.social · 2d

Mark your calendars for the Infrastructural Geographies Michaelmas Term 2025 Seminar Series! @infrastructuralgeo.bsky.social

Four exciting talks, starting with @kbrickell.bsky.social (@kingscollegelondon.bsky.social) and Mel Nowicki (Oxford Brookes University).

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Prof Katherine Brickell @kbrickell.bsky.social · 2d

New @bigissue.com op-ed just landed.

We owe it to mothers + children to shift national conversation around family homelessness + debt.

Want to learn more? Read our book ‘Debt Trap Nation: Family Homelessness in a Failing State’ www.waterstones.com/book/debt-tr...

www.bigissue.com/opinion/debt...

Debt trap nation: How England is failing homeless mothers and children

We owe it to women and mothers to shift the national conversation on homelessness and debt, say academics Katherine Brickell and Mel Nowicki.

www.bigissue.com

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Reposted by Katherine Brickell

Child Poverty Action Group @cpaguk.bsky.social · 2d

Coverage of our new analysis in the Mirror www.mirror.co.uk/news/politic...

Benefit cap leaving some families with as little as £3-per-week, campaigners say

Child Poverty Action Group says the benefit cap - one of the 'harshest hangovers' of the austerity era - is leaving some single parents with next to nothing after rent

www.mirror.co.uk

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Reposted by Gillian Rose, Katherine Brickell

Sarah Klosterkamp @sklosterkamp.bsky.social · 2d

✨ CfP AAG 2026, San Francisco ✨

Tabea Latocha and I are teaming up feminist fabulative futures and we’d love for you to join us.

Our proposed session explores how storytelling, speculation, and fabulation can help us imagine housing otherwise — beyond ownership, extraction, and displacement. 🏡🌿💭

Call for Papers – AAG 2026, San Francisco
Feminist Fabulative Futures: Imagining Housing Otherwise

In the midst of intersecting housing, debt, as well as climate and democracy crises, imagination
becomes a political act. Feminist scholars and artists have long turned to the speculative and the
fabulative to envision worlds that could be otherwise – worlds where care, interdependence, and
collective dwelling replace dispossession, extraction, and foreclosure (McElroy 2023; Thieme 2021;
Netzwerk Feministische Wohnforschung 2025). This session invites contributions that take seriously
the feminist call to imagine differently in the face of deepening urban precarity.

Rather than treating the housing crisis as a failure of politics and finance alone, we approach it as a
failure of imagining housing and its politics radically otherwise. Following feminist and decolonial
traditions of world-making (e.g. Haraway 2013), we ask: What narratives, aesthetics, and speculative
practices can help us re-story housing beyond ownership and enclosure? How can fabulation-as
method, theory, or art-expand what we understand as home, property, or repair? And how might
feminist engagements with fiction, film, sound, and design open pathways toward inhabiting more just
and caring futures?

We seek creative, conceptual, and empirical contributions that explore how feminist fabulative
thinking reshapes our understanding of housing and urban life – both in theory and in practice.

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Prof Katherine Brickell @kbrickell.bsky.social · 2d

Thank you Grace!

Reposted by Katherine Brickell

Grace Blakeley @graceblakeley.substack.com · 2d

“Debt trap nation is a chilling and eye-opening expose on how the British state keeps some of the most vulnerable women in society trapped in a cycle of debt, homelessness, and domestic violence."

My endorsement for this brilliant book, which you can order here: www.waterstones.com/book/debt-tr...

Debt Trap Nation by Katherine Brickell, Mel Nowicki | Waterstones

Buy Debt Trap Nation by Katherine Brickell, Mel Nowicki from Waterstones today! Click and Collect from your local Waterstones or get FREE UK delivery on orders over £25.

www.waterstones.com

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Reposted by Lesley A. Hall, Sara M. Butler, Katherine Brickell , and 1 more Lesley A. Hall, Sara M. Butler, Katherine Brickell, David W. Lawson

Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 3d

“More than half of the work done by women in the period between the 16th and 18th centuries took place outside of the home, and around half of all housework and three-quarters of care work was conducted professionally for other households” [England]

phys.org/news/2025-10...

A woman's place was not in the home: Challenging the assumptions about women's work in early modern history

New research has revealed that women played a fundamental role in the development of England's national economy before 1700.

phys.org

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Reposted by Katherine Brickell

Social Housing Posts @uksocialhousing.bsky.social · 4d

“Revealed: Labour-run council using legal loophole to serve families with no-fault evictions”

www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Revealed: Labour-run council using legal loophole to serve families with no-fault evictions

Exclusive: London council created an arm’s-length body to manage some of its housing stock

www.theguardian.com

Prof Katherine Brickell @kbrickell.bsky.social · 5d

"Want to reduce the costs of temporary accommodation? Then get to grips with male violence".

Check out our OpEd in Inside Housing:

www.insidehousing.co.uk/comment/want...

Want to reduce the costs of temporary accommodation? Then get to grips with male violence

Long-seeded failures to invest enough in domestic abuse prevention are playing out poorly for local authorities and dangerously for survivors themselves, write Katherine Brickell and Mel Nowicki

www.insidehousing.co.uk

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Reposted by Katherine Brickell

RC21-ISA @rc21.bsky.social · 5d

On #WorldHomelessDay, we are delighted to announce the publication of "Debt Trap Nation" by Prof Katherine Brickell & Dr Mel Nowicki, supported by a hashtag#USFPandemics & Cities grant. www.debt-trap-nation.org/book #urban #sociology

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Reposted by Katherine Brickell

Hyun Bang Shin @hyunshin.bsky.social · 5d

LSE Geography & Environment is recruiting: Assistant Professor and Associate Professor in Urban Planning.

Expertise in sustainable cities, planning regulation, or planning law is especially welcome.

For more info, pls visit here 👉 jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

#LSE #UrbanPlanning #AcademicJobs

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Reposted by Katherine Brickell

The Guardian @theguardian.com · 6d

Phillipson presses Starmer and Reeves to abolish two-child benefit cap in full

Exclusive: education secretary tells the Guardian scrapping limit entirely in November’s budget most cost-effective way to tackle child poverty Bridget Phillipson is pushing the prime minister and chancellor to scrap the two-child benefit cap entirely in next month’s budget, with the education secretary telling the Guardian the evidence is clear that it needs to be removed. Phillipson, who is finalising a report to Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves on child poverty, said abolishing the cap was the most cost effective way to make lives better for young disadvantaged people. Continue reading...

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Katherine Brickell

Brian Goldstone @brian-goldstone.bsky.social · 7d

An interviewer asked me about America's "cost of living crisis," and I was struck again by how casually we've let such profoundly nightmarish phrases slip into our everyday lexicon.

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Reposted by Jonathan Portes, Katherine Brickell

Alison McGovern @allymcgovern.bsky.social · 7d

We cannot accept this.

news.sky.com/story/abject...

'Abject failure' as UK's homeless deaths rise - including children

The government's homelessness minister, Alison McGovern MP, has described the increased number of deaths as an "abject failure that cannot be tolerated".

news.sky.com

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Prof Katherine Brickell @kbrickell.bsky.social · 7d

It felt a career highlight to meet Liz Davies KC from @gardencourtlaw.bsky.social to discuss the legal implications of my research on domestic abuse, rent arrears, and housing allocations.

Together with @cihhousing.bsky.social we are drafting a best practice guide for local authorities + HAs.

Reposted by Benjamin Mason Meier, Stacy D. VanDeveer, Katherine Brickell

Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social · 8d

Discussing this phenomenon w/ a group of profs. Someone morbidly joked, “& northern profs are fleeing the country.” The next person said…”even if we were all willing & able to abandon this place there are not enough jobs for us globally and the U.S. employs a huge # of international scholars too.”

‘Fear and hopelessness’: study finds one in four professors consider leaving US south

Survey by American Association of Professors shows nearly quarter of respondents are switching due to states’s politics

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Katherine Brickell

Pharmacist on a Pushbike @ppushbike.bsky.social · 8d

A play facility that was paid for by community fundraising has been demolished because residents complained about the noise.

They should be ashamed of themselves

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Council demolishes play area after noise complaints - BBC News

Parents in a Derbyshire town say their children are 'devastated' they have lost the facility.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Reposted by Katherine Brickell

Phil Hubbard @gypjh2000.bsky.social · 8d

I'm cited in here about the role of upscale student accommodation in the crisis of housing affordability in our major cities www.timeshighereducation.com/news/ultra-v... #housing #gentrification www.nospacelikehome.study

‘Ultra-volatile’ enrolments cause ‘turbulence’ in student housing

Developers fear ‘glory days’ of non-stop building over as some areas face over-supply problems while city centre overcrowding intensifies

www.timeshighereducation.com

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Reposted by Steve Peers, Andrew Scott, Justin Lewis , and 1 more Steve Peers, Andrew Scott, Justin Lewis, Katherine Brickell

ok.co.uk @ok.co.uk · 8d

Rylan Clark is set to delve into the eerie world of witchcraft in his new show, The Witches Of Essex.

Rylan Clark slams 'misogyny' in British witch hunt as he fronts new Sky show

Rylan Clark shares the spotlight with professor Alice Roberts in The Witches Of Essex, where the pair delve into the dark history of witch hunts - and one discovery rattled Rylan.

www.ok.co.uk

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Prof Katherine Brickell @kbrickell.bsky.social · 9d

Carpet poverty: 'I cried when I saw our new home had bare and uneven floorboards'

And as my research shows, debt also 'greets' tenants moving in social housing given the costs of flooring
www.debt-trap-nation.org/book

Put flooring in The Decent Home Standard!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Carpet poverty: 'I cried when I saw our new home had bare floors'

Kassie lives in social housing, where landlords do not have to provide flooring in the bedrooms.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Reposted by Katherine Brickell

Tom Western @tomwestern.bsky.social · 9d

This year's Claire Dwyer lecture @uclgeography.bsky.social is with Dr Shabna Begum (@runnymedetrust.bsky.social) – reflecting on the 60th anniversary of the Race Relations Act of 1965

Tuesday 25 Nov, tickets below

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-2025-c...

The 2025 Claire Dwyer Lecture: Dr Shabna Begum

Eventbrite - UCL Department of Geography presents The 2025 Claire Dwyer Lecture: Dr Shabna Begum - Tuesday, November 25, 2025 at Common Ground, London, England. Find event and ticket information.

www.eventbrite.co.uk

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Reposted by Susan J. Smith, John Hogan, Katherine Brickell , and 2 more Susan J. Smith, John Hogan, Katherine Brickell, Sarah Hall, Ian Bruff

Agenda Publishing @agendapub.bsky.social · 12d

“A chilling and eye-opening exposé... gives voice to those living at the sharpest edge of austerity and makes an irrefutable case for change.”

@graceblakeley.substack.com on 'Debt Trap Nation' by
@kbrickell.bsky.social & Mel Nowicki (out next week).

uk.bookshop.org/p/books/debt...

#housing #debt

Photo of a pile of books. The books are 'Debt Trap Nation' by Katherine Brickell and Mel Nowicki. Cover image features a woman and small child in a deep concrete basin or pit with no way of climbing out as the ladder is too short.

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Reposted by Katherine Brickell

Brian Goldstone @brian-goldstone.bsky.social · 13d

Truly moved and thankful for this remarkably generous, in-depth review in @nybooks.com.

"The great virtue of There Is No Place for Us is its refusal to look away from the disheartening reality it depicts, or from the depth and pervasiveness of the problem and the pain it causes people."

The Homeless We Don’t See | Jay Neugeboren

As housing costs have risen and affordable housing remains in short supply, even Americans with full-time job are experiencing homelessness.

www.nybooks.com

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Reposted by Katherine Brickell, Ben Anderson

TIBG @tibg.bsky.social · 14d

📢New issue of TIBG📢

Transactions' September Issue features two interventions on environmental crisis & geographies of creativity, 21 papers, and two commentaries on the war in Ukraine.

22/25 pieces are #OpenAccess and available to read here⬇️

rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14755661...

A graphic showing the title page of Transactions on a read background with TIBG in large letters on the right hand page. On the left hand page are eight tiles with 2 interventions and 6 standard articles, with the names of papers in the issue.

1) 'On limit and love in times of environmental crises' by Ihnji Jon
2) 'Geographies of creativity/creative geographies' by Pat Noxolo
3) '‘My body was no longer a problem’: Electric mountain biking, disability, and the cultural politics of green exercise' by Jim Cherrington & James Brighton
4) '‘A wonderful day and a wonderful crossing!’: Internment (im)mobilities, ambivalence, and the residual tourist gaze in Second World War Britain' by Michael Holden & Peter Adey
5) '‘Smartness’ narratives: A critical discourse analysis of smart eldercare in urban China' by Yi Yu
6) 'Critique beyond relation: The stakes of working with the negative, the void and the abyss' by David Chandler & Jonathan Pugh
7) 'Poetics in the work of three urban photographers: Love for the chaotic city from the site of urban rooftops' by Paulina Nordstrom
8) 'Places as refrains: A non-constructive alternative to assemblage thinking' by Peter Merriman

A graphic showing the title page of Transactions on a read background with TIBG in large letters on the right hand page. On the left hand page are nine tiles with standard articles, with the names of papers in the issue.

1) Climate change, bodies and diplomacy: Performing watery futures in Tuvalu
Liam Saddington
2) Digital animal deathscapes: The online circulation of animals killed for conservation
Alexandra Palmer
3) The medium is the message: The geographies of cryptocurrency remittances to Venezuela
Daniel Robins
4) ‘One school, two systems’: Navigating the geographies of alternative education in an elite primary school in China
Zhenjie Yuan, Huiyu Xie, Hong Zhu
5) Translating India to India: Travelling translations, Patanjali Ayurveda, and the visual language of spiritual consumerism
Raksha Pande, Alastair Bonnett
6) Urban political ecologies of sewage surveillance: Creating vital and valuable public health data from wastewater
7) Constructive (in)visibility and the trafficking industrial complex: Leveraging borders for exploitation
Audrey Lumley-Sapanski, Katarina Schwarz
8) Translations, translocations, and pluralism: A transnational and multilingual analysis of the circulation of radical geographical knowledge
Federico Ferretti
9) From biopower to affirmative biopolitics: A (bio)political ecology of becoming with wolves
Valerio Donfrancesco, Chris Sandbrook

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Reposted by Lesley A. Hall, Katherine Brickell

Ruth Holliday @ruthholliday.bsky.social · 14d

Rape crisis centres are closing due to lack of funds. Violent misogyny is skyrocketing online and off. But gender based violence is only weaponized against migrants and trans women, never tackled and taken seriously in its own right. apple.news/AjjROSc0kSGS...

Top cop warns of 'distraction' from threat facing women — Sky News

Helen Millichap told Sky News that the

apple.news

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