The IHSS hosted its 2023 Annual Symposium on 21 and 22 September, organised by three IHSS Fellows – Jessie Sklair, Elsa Noterman and Archie Davies. The Symposium explored the theme of London’s Housing Crises and Global Capitalism, with guest speakers Raquel Rolnik (Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo) and Brenna Bhandar (Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia).
Comprising five events, the Symposium drew on interdisciplinary perspectives on housing struggles and dispossession in London, exploring how London's unique urban challenges are embedded within global circuits of capital, the changing dynamics of financialisation and enduring colonial and racial regimes of property.
On both days of the symposium, we held lunchtime discussions with our guest speakers aimed primarily at graduate students and Early Career Researchers. The first of these was kindly supported by CRoLAC, Queen Mary’s Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean. These two events had initially been programmed as informal seminars, centred on texts by Professor Raquel Rolnik on urbanisation and financialisaton and by Professor Brenna Bhandar on housing, property, and the ongoing legacies of colonialism. Following announcement of local industrial action at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), however, we moved these events onto the picket line, where they formed the basis of two lively and well attended teach outs. Raquel and Brenna explored important connections between their work, the local and global contexts of London’s housing crises, and the issues of pay and precarity driving industrial action at QMUL.
Following the teach out on Thursday, we travelled along Whitechapel Road to Toynbee Hall. This listed building houses a charity addressing poverty and injustice in the East End of London, and was an ideal setting for a conversation between our two guest speakers and chaired by IHSS Fellow Dr Elsa Noterman, on the role of global capitalism in driving, deepening and expanding London’s multiple housing crises. Professor Raquel Rolnik drew attention to the place of real estate finance in the ‘assetisation of everything’, while Professor Brenna Bhandar explored the historical emergence of the different forms in which property itself is held. Their two perspectives combined to offer attendees a rich range of approaches to the everyday realities of dispossession, eviction, precarity and unaffordability that marks the experience of housing for London’s majority. Following the conversation, the speakers engaged in an extensive open discussion with the audience, with questions ranging from the place of property relations in the foundations of liberal philosophy to the potentials for international solidarity in resisting extractive forms of property finance.
On Friday morning, we invited Symposium attendees to join us on the streets of East London, for a walking tour on the ‘New Architectures of Finance’ led by IHSS Global Professorial Fellow Caroline Knowles. Starting at Bethnal Green Town Hall (now a hotel and apartments, illustrative of the changes seen in the area), we followed a busy route up the Hackney Road and onto Shoreditch High Street, finishing at the edge of the financial district. Along the way, we learned how East London’s small-scale industry and (later) wholesale luggage and shoe merchants have been increasingly displaced by upscale housing and a new night-time economy, a process fuelled by spiralling rent hikes and expanding global networks of financialised real estate.
Following the teach out on Friday, we returned to Toynbee Hall for a workshop, “Housing struggles in London: linking the global to the local.” Jacob Stringer, a PhD student in the School of Geography who works with London Renters Union, helped to plan and facilitate the workshop. It brought together housing activists and scholars working on tackling inequality, dispossession and precarity in London's manifold housing crises in order to consider how a global perspective on the city’s housing crises might contribute to ongoing housing activism. Through facilitated small and large group discussions, we reflected on the state of housing and housing activism in London, and London’s place in global housing activism.
In addition to the formal events, there was a lot of opportunity for people to talk and share ideas informally, and we hope to be able to follow up on the connections made and the energy generated to develop more initiatives and activities in the future around a topic which is so important to us all; whether at local, national or international level.
For more images visit the Symposium 2023 Media Gallery.