Dr Alison Wallace
Emeritus Professor

Profile

Biography

From October 2024 Alison is an Emeritus Professor in the School. 

Previously, a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy and Housing she has been part of the Centre for Housing Policy since 2001, working on a range of projects relating to the sustainability of marginal homeownership, shared ownership housing, private landlords and housing markets. Alison has worked in Northern Ireland on housing inequalities and the fallout of the financial crisis, and developed an interest in the use of new digital technologies in housing, from risk profiling in housing access and the use of Internet of Things technologies in people’s homes. 

Her latest project has examined the digital risk profiling tools that influence access to housing via a Nuffield funded Code Encounters study. 

Alison works on policy-driven impactful research and has contributed to policy debates around shared ownership, Northern Ireland’s housing markets and sustainable homeownership. 

Previously a social housing practitioner with many years experience, Alison completed my doctoral research into the cultural economy of local housing markets in 2007.

Alison served as the Secretary of the Housing Studies Association and was a Committee member between 2011 and 2014. Alison aTrustee and Treasurer of the Housing Studies Charitable Trust since 2019 and a Churchill Fellow - for work on homeownership education in the US - since 2016.

Research

Overview

Research interests

• Housing and AI/ML technologies
• Low cost homeownership
• Sustainable homeownership
• Self-build housing
• Housing markets
• Cultural-economy
• Systematic review methodology

Projects

• Research into the sustainability of affordable homeownership programmes for the Standard Life Foundation.
  
  
• Code Encounters: A study exploring the societal impact of algorithmic risk-profiling tools used by lenders and landlords in relation to access to housing funded by the Nuffield Foundation.
  
  
• Research into the use of Internet of Things smart home environmental sensors to mitigate indoor air quality risks in social housing.