Suzanne Fitzpatrick has a degree in public law from the University of Glasgow, and completed her PhD on youth homelessness at the University's Department of Urban Studies in 1998. She then held a number of academic posts in the Department of Urban Studies before moving to the University of York in 2003 to become the Joseph Rowntree Professor of Housing Policy and Director of the Centre for Housing Policy. Suzanne took up her Research Professorship in Housing and Social Policy at Heriot-Watt University in 2010 and is director of the university's Institute of Social Policy, Housing and Equalities Research (ISPHERE). Suzanne specialises in research on social housing, homelessness, destitution, and other extreme forms of disadvantage and much of her work has an international comparative dimension. She is a member of the board of the Glasgow Homelessness Network and the National Housing Federation, and is a research advisor to the Chicago-based Institute of Global Homelessness.
1. Protest housing achievement:
'Being involved, in various ways, in improving the homelessness legislation in all three GB countries'
2. An anecdote illustrating a moment when persistence paid off/when you overcame a hurdle:
'Managing, with my brilliant team in the Institute for Social Policy, Housing and Equalities Research (ISPHERE) at Heriot-Watt University, to persuade over 100 crisis services across the country to participate in our first Destitution in the U.K survey, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. This survey showed that, over the course of 2015, more than 1 million people (including 300,000 children) couldn't afford the absolute essentials that we all need to eat properly, keep clean, and stay warm and dry. Working against an impossibly tight timetable at the start of this year, the ISPHERE team, alongside our partners at Kantar, managed to pull off an even bigger and more ambitious update survey for 2017. We are very grateful to all the crisis services that gave their time so generously to help us achieve this, and I am very proud of leading a team that overcame numerous hurdles to deliver on our commitment to evidence the extreme forms of deprivation facing far too many people in the UK.'
3. Twitter handle:
@ISPHERE_HWU
