How can social housing practitioners, policy makers and academics meaningfully listen for, and act on, lived expertise? How can lived expertise be included at all stages of the social housing pipeline and housing management? These questions formed the basis for a workshop Danielle Hynes and Carla Kayanan developed for the International Social Housing Festival (ISHF) held in Dublin, Ireland from 4 – 6 June 2025.

The 2025 ISHF is the fifth year of this initiative, which was created by Housing Europe. Unfortunately, this year’s Festival was sponsored by AXA, French insurance firm and key target of the BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement, a Palestinian-led movement for freedom, justice and equality. The BDS movement is inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, and urges action to pressure Israel to comply with international law. During the session, Danielle and Carla acknowledge the tension of participating in a Festival sponsored by a BDS target, making a statement that pointed out this contradiction. They condemned the ISHF, described as a celebration of decent, affordable housing for all, accepting sponsorship from a company that is linked to funding arms for Israel while it destroys Palestinian homes and lives. This was well received by attendees at the session.

At the 1^st Data Stories workshop (The Data Politics of Planning and Property Data, September 2024) participants alerted us to the upcoming ISHF with Dublin as host. Danielle had presented a paper on the importance of political voice and listening and thoughts around existing tensions with incorporating lived expertise into social housing in an increasingly datafied world were percolating. The ISHF, with its theme on storytelling, appeared as the perfect venue to interrogate the role of lived experience as expertise. Carla and Danielle put their heads together and wrote an abstract for a 2-hour workshop to explore the topic. They invited John Bissett, community organiser at St. Andrew’s Community Centre, to join forces with them based on his close work with social housing residents and his acclaimed book, It’s Not Where You Live, It’s How You Live (Policy Press, 2023), which is an ethnography based on months interacting and listening to residents of a Dublin public housing estate. Through Data Stories we are experiencing the benefit of arts-based methods, and decided to incorporate an arts-based activity in the workshop.

Image: Markers and stickers sit in the foreground whilst workshop participants discuss introduced prompts in the background

The two-hour workshop began with group introductions. We quickly learned that participants came from diverse international backgrounds and a range of sectoral experiences from academia, the civil sector and social housing management. By way of introduction into the material, in small groups participants discussed what lived experience expertise meant to them. After a quick all-group discussion summarising key points from the conversation, Danielle and Carla provided a synopsis of theories on lived experience expertise, honing in on the importance of voice, epistemic justice and ensuring that structures are in place to bring in people with lived experience at all stages of the research and/or policymaking process. John then took up the mantel to discuss the making of his book, told through passages of the book that highlighted key points around class, gender and structural inequality. This concluded the first half of the workshop.

After a short break, participants were asked to reevaluate their understanding of lived experience in small groups based on the material from the first half of the workshop. Then Carla and Danielle invited participants to reflect on a number of prompts utilising creative, abstract methods to respond, using paper, markers and stickers.

Image: participants creatively respond to prompts shown on slide

Image: creative work prompts

After about 20 minutes of this art activity, participants shared what they had created. Everyone enthusiastically engaged in the creative aspect of the workshop, despite some self-effacing jokes about drawing abilities! The conversations generated through the artistic outputs were rich and insightful, each person spoke briefly about what they had thought through and how they responded. Key points arising from the discussion included the metaphor of knowledge exchange and collaboration as akin to water flowing, the value of acknowledging power differentials and working against hierarchy in lived experience expertise collaborations, the potential value of training for those working in service delivery to value and simply believe lived experience expertise, the many barriers that may be present for people to have a conversation at all (including available time, if someone is hungry, and the weather!), and a feeling of confusion around how to turn ideas into action.

Image: Participants respond to prompts creatively

Participants let us know that despite being uncertain and even sceptical about the creative prompts, they found this method of responding helpful to think through parts of their work they had not considered before. We thank all the participants for sharing their insights with us and embracing different ways of thinking. We would also like to thank Ella Harris and Hannah Mumby, Data Stories artists in residence, whose format of creative workshops inspired Danielle and Carla for this session.

Author: Juliette Davret

From 21 to 23 May, the annual French conference SAGEO (Spatial Analysis and Geomatics) took place in the historic city of Avignon, France. Juliette Davret, the French touch of our team, attended to present our research.

Day 1 – Supporting Early-Career Researchers 

The conference began with a workshop aimed at early-career researchers, focusing on the transition from academia to the public or private sector. It was a valuable and honest discussion, offering practical advice and personal experiences to help guide young researchers in shaping their future paths.

To wrap up the day, attendees enjoyed a guided tour of Avignon’s historic center, exploring the medieval architecture, narrow streets, and cultural landmarks like the Papal Palace. It was a great way to discover the city.

Day 2 – Parallel sessions and a taste of local life

The second day of SAGEO featured two sets of parallel sessions. In the morning, participants chose between Image Processing and Spatial Metrics, Graphs, Relation and Scales. Both offering in-depth presentations and new insights.

In the afternoon, attention shifted to sessions on Artificial Intelligence in Geomatics and Mapping, Spatialisation, and Geovisualisation, showcasing creative approaches to geographic data and emerging technologies.

That evening everyone gathered for a dinner at a “Guinguette” – a traditional, laid-back riverside restaurant typical of the region. It was the perfect setting to relax and connect with fellow researchers over good food and conversation.

Day 3 – Presenting on Digital Data

On the final day, Juliette presented our team’s recent work in the Digital Data session. This panel featured seven presentations exploring a wide range of topics: from digital globes and emotional cartography to coastal risk analysis and educational mapping tools. The room was full, and the discussions were lively and thoughtful.

Juliette presented the following paper:

Kitchin R., Davret J., Kayanan C. M. & Mutter S. (2025). Data mobilities: rethinking the movement and circulation of digital data. Mobilities, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2025.2481309

At the same time, another session focused on Mobilities was held. In the afternoon the conference concluded with two final parallel sessions on Climate and Biodiversity, bringing ecological themes to the forefront.

The full program of the conference is available here: SAGEO 2025 Program

A successful event

SAGEO 2025 stood out for its high-quality presentations, interdisciplinary themes, and engaged audience. Juliette was grateful for the opportunity to take part and to share our team’s research in such a dynamic environment.

Her participation was supported by Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute (MUSSI) through their Small Grants Scheme, which helped make the trip to Avignon possible.

This edition of SAGEO was not just about research, it was also about the community, collaboration, and celebrating the role of data and spatial analysis in tackling complex challenges.

 

Earlier this month Samuel Mutter and Danielle Hynes attended the Conference of Irish Geographers 2025, held at Queens University over three exceptionally sunny days. Danielle and Sam presented in two sessions: ‘Creative Methodologies’ and ‘Critical Geographies of Housing’.

In Creative Methodologies, Danielle and Sam discussed two aspects of their current work, focusing on their ongoing collaboration with artist Mel Galley on the theme of ‘data narratives’ and nascent work around photographing planning site notices around Ireland. In a presentation titled ‘Telling Data Otherwise: Creating Housing Data Stories through Researcher-Artist Collaboration in Dublin, Ireland’, they reflected on the collaborative process with Mel, tracing the work of artist and researchers to find ways of unsettling, countering or responding to mainstream data narratives of housing and planning through practices such as grid-based story writing. Meanwhile, reflections on site notice photography raised the potential for such approaches to foreground the emplaced and material qualities of data in the built environment.

Two other excellent presentations were delivered in this session. The first was from Gerry Kearns, Isabella Oberlander, Fearghus Ó Conchúir and Karen Till who discussed dance as a form of knowledge and the possibilities of tearmann aiteach / queer sanctuary. The second came from Ruodi Yang, who is exploring public space under neoliberalism through the lens of street performance.  

In the Critical Geographies of Housing session Sam presented findings from CATU’s Eviction Nation report, in place of Fiadh Tubridy who was unable to attend. Danielle presented on work undertaken during her PhD, examining the shift from government managed public housing to NGO-owned and managed community housing. This presentation was in conversation with Maedhbh Nic Lochlainn’s work, who also presented in this session, examining the similar shift from social housing delivered by Local Authorities in Ireland to the increasing growth of the AHB sector.

On the final day, attendees were invited on one of two field trips. Danielle attended a bus tour of Belfast, led by geologist and geophysicist Alastair Ruffell. Attendees visited various sites around Belfast and heard a little about the history of the city. Visiting the peace wall, two graveyards, and the new Grand Central Station (to drop off everyone heading home), Alastair told us some of the history of the city and his part in it as a forensic geologist.

We’d like to thank the organisers for such a wonderful and well run conference, and to all those who attended sessions where we presented and asked such engaged questions.

On Monday the 5th of May, postdoctoral researcher on the Data Stories project Sam Mutter participated in a day of events on Community Action Archiving at the Usher Street Community Centre, Dublin. 

The event was hosted by Tom O’Dea (NCAD) in collaboration with the Liberties Community Development Project and the Community Action Tenants Union (CATU), of which Sam is a member. The day was attended by a mixture of artists, community activists (including those from CATU) and NCAD students on the Masters in Art and Social Action.

Led by fellow members of the CATU archiving group Tommy Gavin and Jazz Burns, Sam helped facilitate a workshop practicing cataloguing for the CATU digital archive, using sample materials produced by CATU and other related Irish housing activist groups. Activities involved using a draft intake form developed by the archiving group to catalogue different types of record, from campaign leaflets and social media content, to documents from CATU’s Ard Fheis (Annual General Meetings).    

In a pragmatic sense, the activity provided feedback to the archiving group on how the intake form and associated processes could be clarified or improved with a view to opening up this process to other members via their local branches. However, it simultaneously prompted discussions around the politics of sensitivity and redaction (especially in the current global political climate), and the importance of cataloguing in this context being a collective endeavour which wherever possible involves the creators, users and/or subjects of the data in question.

The CATU workshop joined a selection of other interesting events throughout the day. This included a talk from Josh MacPhee of Interference Archive, based in New York, a brainstorming session around the potential for a physical housing action archive to be established in Dublin, and artistic works from NCAD students made using and in response to materials from the South Inner City Community Development Association (SICCDA) archive. 

Common themes across these sessions included the challenge of creating archives as an accessible space of lively engagement through which communities would feel an attachment to memories and histories, and be inspired to collective action – as opposed to more traditional conceptions of archives as dusty rooms full of carefully indexed boxes. This in turn sparked conversations around the balance to be struck between engagement and preservation, and the question of how archives might be meaningful and useful at a time when community and cultural spaces are frequently fighting against threats of removal in favour of more financially valuable land-uses.   

These discussions will help to shape the CATU archiving group going forward, as well as feeding into the broader findings of the Data Stories project. 

Since January, our project has entered a new phase, launching a fresh series of case studies. While most of these are based in Ireland, we’ve broadened our scope to examine data practices at the European level. Given that Ireland must comply with EU data collection standards, we wanted to explore how European harmonisation shapes data production in Ireland, how data flows across borders, and the political and critical issues surrounding data practices. 

To investigate these questions, Juliette Davret travelled to Luxembourg in late April to meet with representatives from Eurostat and ESPON. At Eurostat, she met with the team responsible for short-term business statistics, and at ESPON, she connected with the team working on the Housing4All project. 

Before these meetings, she also spoke with representatives from Ireland’s Central Statistics Office (CSO). These initial conversations helped her understand how Irish statisticians prepare and submit data to Eurostat and highlighted potential areas of friction or challenge in meeting EU requirements. These insights proved valuable in framing the discussions in Luxembourg.

Meeting with Eurostat representatives shed light on the complexities of data processing and standardisation across EU member states. They discussed the challenges of aligning timelines, addressing national data specificities, and creating entirely new datasets. These obstacles reflect broader tensions between Eurostat’s centralised data strategy and the diverse realities of data production in different countries, in line with what we have observed within Ireland’s own data ecosystem. 

At ESPON, the focus shifted to the topic of housing affordability and the difficulties of developing coherent data narratives at the European scale. Juliette met with both a project manager and a data manager, which offered complementary perspectives. A key challenge discussed was the lack of harmonised datasets, particularly concerning issues like housing vacancies and income. These data gaps make comparisons more difficult and challenge the development of evidence-based policies. The urgency of improving housing data was a recurring theme, especially given the strong role that data-driven narratives play in planning and housing policy across Europe.

This field visit deepened our understanding of the broader European data landscape and how national and EU-level priorities overlap. It also emphasised the importance – and the difficulty – of building comprehensive, harmonised datasets to support effective and equitable policymaking.

In the last week of March, Rob, Juliette and Carla’s schedules were packed full with a week-long attendance at the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting, held in Detroit, Michigan. This was the first AAG for Juliette, and a return after many years’ absence for Carla and Rob. It must be said that the sessions certainly did not disappoint. The week was packed with sessions organised by the team and papers presented by them, but we also co-organised a tour of Detroit and a print-making workshop. Below we highlight some of the key moments from the conference.

Data, Housing and Planning I & II 

Despite flying all Sunday and feeling jet lagged, the Data Stories team, along with co-organiser Dr. Taylor Shelton, had the (mis)fortune of having their first back-to-back sessions slotted for Monday, the very first day of the conference, at 8.30 am. A total of 8 papers were presented on the themes of data debates, deriving sentiment from housing on data, data narratives and the politics and complications of aggregating housing data. Rob Kitchin presented work from phase 1 of the project in a paper titled, Data debates in housing and planning: The data politics of facts and counter-facts. Overall, the papers presented in this session were excellent. If all goes as planned, a selection of these papers will become part of a special issue in a housing journal. We will update the blog with details when that happens. 

Theoretical Perspectives on Research Creation in Place and the Built Environment I & II 

The second organised session was also held bright and early at 8.30 on Wednesday. Two back-to-back sessions brought together researchers and artists working at the intersection where social science methods and arts-based methods intersect. A total of 9 presenters used wide-ranging case studies (green and blue environments, transportation, disability, war, data dashboards) as well as a series of mediums (comics, workshops, storytelling, archiveology, sculpture, visual storytelling, photographs) to theorise research creation and the co-creation of knowledge. Carla Kayanan opened up the session with a paper titled, Exploring the synergy between artistic practices and academia in shaping the built environment towards research-creation methods. This paper builds on previous work on research creation but draws from longer engagement with the first set of artists in residence. 

The final paper-related event occurred on Thursday with Juliette Davret presenting the paper Rethinking datafied movements: A critical comparison of direct action and lobbying as data activism in an urban context. This paper was accepted in Dr. Eugene McCann and Dr. Magie Ramirez’s pre-organised session, Futures of organizing and the urban: Confronting crisis in theory and practice. 

Exploring beyond the conference 

Outside of Huntington Place’s walls, the convention centre that housed the AAG, the Data Stories team members engaged in events that gave them the opportunity to experience Detroit’s built environment and its artistic community. On Thursday afternoon, Detroit scholar and historian, Dr. Patrick Cooper-McCann, took a group of Irish Geographers on a walking tour of downtown Detroit. 

The walk consisted mostly of discussions outside of buildings along Woodward, however we did enter the Guardian building and the Whitney hotel. 

Finally, on the last day of the conference, Data Stories team members tagged along with Australian Geographers to attend a workshop by visual artist and printer Wendy Murray hosted in the workshop of Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. Wendy kindly took a morning to share her love of printing with the group. As part of the event, Dr. Kurt Iveson lead us on a walk of Wendy’s Detroit neighbourhood while the group, per Wendy’s request, focused on emergent feelings from the walk. These sentiments were then used to co-create a series of prints that Wendy then gifted to us. Additionally, though absent on the day, Amos had generously prepared a series of prints to present to our group. We cannot encourage you enough to purchase Amos’s beautiful and recently released book, Citizen Printer, and to read more about him and his work in this 2024 article by Charlotte Beach. 

On Saturday 29th March Eviction Nation was launched at Connolly Books. This report, published by the Community Action Tenants Union, provides analysis of legal and illegal evictions since 2015, based on dispute outcomes published by the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB). The report outlines failures of regulation which allow evictions to take place on a widespread scale.

Photo: Over 60 people gathered in Connolly Books to launch the Eviction Nation report, credit Job van Aken

The CATU eviction database group has been working on the project for over a year and a half, coordinated by Fiadh Tubridy. The project has grown out of years of landlord research conducted by CATU members to defend fellow members against eviction. Two researchers from the Data Stories team, Samuel Mutter and Danielle Hynes, joined the eviction database group in early 2024, contributing alongside those already undertaking the research, including Utrecht University researcher Anushka Dasgupta and independent researcher Michelle Connolly, as well as many others.

Photo: James Corscadden, the software developer who created the topevictors.ie website, discusses the work, credit Danielle Hynes

The project included two key outputs: a website and report. The website launched in late February, and includes an interactive map of all evictions in Ireland recorded within RTB data from 2015-2024, and profiles the landlords responsible for the highest number of evictions, showing their influence on the housing system and the lives of tenants in Ireland as well as the strategies they use to evict tenants, with further detail and analysis provided in the report.

Photo: Printed copies of Eviction Nation for sale at the launch, credit Job van Aken

The website reveals 353 officially recorded illegal evictions between 2015 and 2024, as well as 4,524 eviction orders issued by the RTB – these are ‘legal’ evictions which have come through the RTB disputes process. The analysis of legal evictions was aided by Data Stories team member Oliver Dawkins, who assisted in gathering the RTB data held in individual scanned PDFs, made the documents text-searchable, and used advanced data processing techniques to extract the required information.

A key finding of the research was that both small landlords, who may only own a few properties, and large landlords including corporate real estate investors and Approved Housing Bodies, often evict tenants in pursuit of profit. Small landlords are disproportionately responsible for the violent, sensational types of illegal eviction that occasionally catch media attention, and can give rise to the narrative that it is only ‘a few bad apples’ that mistreat their tenants. However, large landlords are responsible for a growing proportion of total evictions, reflecting the growing consolidation of the rental market in Ireland and the fact that these actors have the knowledge and resources to follow the relatively simple process to evict their tenants legally. While small and large landlords have different ways of dealing with tenants, in both cases their business models can involve eviction.

The less dramatic, and entirely legal evictions are often just as devastating for those forced out of their homes. Ultimately, the strategies of both small and large landlords are motivated by private profit and both are deeply harmful to tenants. Work such as the Eviction Nation report and the landlord database website, collectively undertaken in order to assist tenants to organise and defend against eviction, are essential in challenging the injustice of widespread evictions.

At the launch, data visualisation expert Rudi O’Malley presented work he has created with the data gathered by the CATU eviction database team. The visualisation, named Snakes and Landlords, presents some aspects of the research in a digestible, interactive format, highlighting some of the key findings of the research.

Photo: Rudi O’Malley presents his data visualisation to the delighted crowd, credit Danielle Hynes

Enormous thanks to everyone who contributed to the project, and to those who came on the night and engaged with great discussion, questions and ideas for next steps for the project. Physical copies of the report are available for purchase at Connolly Books, The Library Project and Little Deer Comics, Dublin.

Data Voids: Understanding Digital Geographies of the Built Environment through Negativity and Refusal 

Session Organisers: Danielle Hynes & Samuel Mutter 

Emerging work in cultural geography has called on researchers to consider the (im)potential of ‘negative’ spaces and affects, asking what can be done with voids, limits and (in)capacities of different kinds (e.g. Bissell et al, 2021). Meanwhile, across media and cultural studies, critical data studies and feminist and political geography there is growing attention to the possibilities of refusal (e.g. James et al., 2023), particularly refusal as a collective and generative response to datafied systems. Both bodies of work are concerned with gaps, absences, silences and negation, though with varied foci and orientations toward action. 

Our session seeks to bring these literatures into conversation, with a particular focus on digital data and the built environment. 

The governance of built environments is increasingly informed and narrated through digital data – from ‘evidence-based’ planning, to the modelling of land/housing markets, and uses of ‘proptech’ to facilitate investment or discipline tenants, data seem almost as foundational as bricks and mortar. Yet such data are often characterised by absences, gaps and silences. Such absences prompt initiatives to fix, ‘free’ and/or repurpose the data in order to enhance access and transparency. However, recent work problematises transparency as a universal response to data-driven systems, pointing to refusal and data justice as approaches pursuing a structural shift relative to data harms. 

The session will seek theoretical and empirical contributions pertaining to questions including, but not limited to: 

• What might an attention to data voids from the perspective of negative geographies and refusal illuminate? 

• How do absences of data shape the built environment? 

• How do acts of refusal in the face of data-driven governance generate meaningful political and spatial alternatives? 

• How might methodological approaches to data be developed or reconceived through working with refusal and negativity? 

• How do we reckon with refusal alongside the politics of data suppression? 

• How do we register what or who is left absent (unbuilt, unseen or unheard) by/through data in its shaping of built spaces? 

Papers from this session will be considered for a potential Special Issue in a relevant journal.

Submit abstracts (max 250 words) by *April 30, 2025* here, selecting Special Session 8. 

More information about the conference can be found here. 

Notifications of acceptance will be sent by *May 15, 2025*. 

Call for papers, with travel bursaries 

The use of research creation and arts-based methods in studying housing, planning and the built environment
9 – 10 September 2025
Maynooth University, Ireland
Organisers: Rob Kitchin, Carla Maria Kayanan, Juliette Davret and Oliver Dawkins  

We are seeking participants for a two-day workshop that will explore the use of research creation and arts-based methods in studying housing, planning and the built environment. The workshop is organised as part of the ERC funded project, ‘Data Stories: Telling Stories about and with Planning and Property Data’ (https://datastories.maynoothuniversity.ie/). 

We are offering: 

• 10 travel bursaries for speakers, 5 up to €800 with 3 night’s accommodation (for beyond-Europe travel) and 5 up to €250 with 2 night’s accommodation (for within-Europe travel). The bursary is open to doctoral students, early career researchers, senior academics and artists. 

• 3 travel bursaries for doctoral students to attend the workshop of up to €250, plus 2 night’s accommodation.  

Workshop focus  

Over the last two decades, there has been a turn towards using creative and arts-based practices within social sciences to research aspects of society. Research-creation is an approach that utilises creative and arts-based practices and methods throughout the entire research process from the formulation of a project, through its enactment, to its dissemination (Loveless 2019, Truman 2021). Methodologically, such research might use various forms of creative writing (e.g., speculative fiction, poetry, short stories, creative non-fiction), art and craft practices (e.g., painting, photography, sculpture, textiles) and performance (e.g., theatre, film-making, music) as participatory methods to generate shared insight into an issue. Using a research creation approach provides opportunities for opening up new ways to conceptualise and understand issues related to housing, planning and the built environment.  

This workshop aims to explore and theorise:  

• the potential of research creation as an approach for making sense of housing, planning and the built environment; 

• the implications of different artistic / creative practices for the co-production of knowledge  

• the implications of different models of collaboration (e.g. the artist plus researcher pair vs. the artist doing research/researcher doing art)  

We are open to other exploring and thinking through other relevant issues and questions. While we will organise traditional paper-based sessions, we are also open to alternative modes of presentation and session formats. Following the workshop, selected speakers will be expected to contribute a full chapter to an edited academic book of the workshop proceedings. 

We invite applications to attend the workshop from scholars, artists and scholar-artists who are using a research creation approach or arts-based methods to conduct housing, planning and built environment research. We seek contributions that emphasise epistemological inquiry rather than those that primarily showcase the outputs of using arts-based methods. Papers that critically consider arts-based methods in the social sciences, engage with data, and focus on housing, planning, and property will be prioritised.

Application process 

To apply to present a paper and receive a travel bursary please submit a short cover letter explaining why you would like to attend, a title and a short abstract (150 – 200 words) to both carla.kayanan@mu.ie & juliette.davret@mu.ie (using the subject line ‘CFP RESEARCH CREATION WORKSHOP’) by 14th March 2025. 

To apply for a doctoral student travel bursary to attend the workshop please submit a cover letter explaining why you would like to attend to both carla.kayanan@mu.ie & juliette.davret@mu.ie (using the subject line ‘BURSARY RESEARCH CREATION WORKSHOP’) by 14th March 2025. 

A decision on selection will be made by 14th April 2025. 

For any queries please jointly email carla.kayanan@mu.ie & juliette.davret@mu.ie