Description: 10th Anniversary Edition of the ENHR Working Group ‘Collaborative Housing’. The ENHR Working Group Collaborative Housing was established in 2016 with the aim to bring conceptual and methodological rigour to a fragmented research landscape on collective, self-organized housing forms. Over the past decade, the group has grown into one of the most active within ENHR, consistently amongst the working groups attracting the highest number of abstracts and papers at annual conferences. It has produced several special issues, books, and joint research projects, while fostering a vibrant community of established and early-career scholars committed to exploring housing alternatives grounded in collective agency.

To mark ten years of advancing this emerging field within housing studies, the Working Group founders and coordinators invite contributions to a special anniversary session series. This series will reflect on the impact and legacy of collaborative housing research and practices and explore future directions for research.

We welcome papers that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Critical perspectives and prefigurative practices and imaginaries raised by collaborative housing scholarship, addressing the limits of dominant paradigms of housing provision.
• Policy innovation inspired by or derived from collaborative housing principles, aimed at improving housing outcomes.
• Scaling-up strategies for diverse forms of collaborative housing.

Depending on the number and quality of submissions, selected contributions will be considered for inclusion in a Special Issue of a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to this topic.

Description: In the Comparative Housing Policy Working Group, we welcome papers on all aspects of international comparative housing, including policy, policy transfer, theoretical frameworks, as well as methodology of comparative research and policy transfer.  Our workshops are friendly and supportive and provide the ideal environment for exploring and discussing your research.

Description: We welcome papers on any aspects of private rented markets and policy towards its regulation. Key themes we have covered in recent years include sustainability and affordability in the private rented sector (PRS), the evolving nature of renting, challenges facing landlords and tenants in the PRS, the aspirations of landlords and tenants, institutional landlords in the sector, the challenges facing licensees, students and key workers. the intersection of the PRS with other tenures, and the role of the PRS in meeting the needs of low income housing. This Working group specifically welcomes papers in line with this year’s conference themes. Possible topics include the role of private renting and Europe’s aging populations, the financialisation of private rented housing, inequalities facing private renters when compared to other tenures and other topics relevant to housing wealth and inequality.

Chairs: Michel Vols, Mark Jordan, Stefan van Tongeren
 

Description: The primary aims of the Housing Law Working Group are to foster dialogue and European research on the significance of law, rights, and regulation in all aspects of housing, land, and planning. These objectives are intentionally broad to accommodate national variations. Beyond their political, social, and economic implications, housing, land, and planning are deeply shaped by differing national legal frameworks. Divergent national approaches have long hindered international exchange in this field, and while traditional groupings of legal and socio-legal expertise have not explicitly addressed land law, they have strongly influenced it despite efforts towards European harmonisation. This group seeks to encourage exchange and debate among individuals working in this domain and to deepen understanding of the diverse types of law involved. Contributions drawing on legal, economic, sociological, and philosophical theories are welcome, alongside empirical sociological research on the implementation of the law, with the aim of enhancing cross-border understanding and expertise.

Description: We welcome contributions on the Oslo’ conference theme ‘Housing and Prosperity in the 21st Century: Social, Spatial and Historical Inequalities.’ This theme directly aligns with this working group focus on the social mechanisms behind and the implications of concentrated poverty and deprivation, segregation between various socio-economic groups, and broader social and spatial inequalities. Other topics of interest are life course trajectories, social networks, social capital, or social cohesion, and neighbourhood effects, as well as policies targeting matters in neighbourhoods and urban areas, such as social mix and de-concentration policies. Another focus concerns the question of how neighbourhoods and their residents deal with the impacts of macro trends such as welfare state retrenchment, austerity regimes, and budget cuts. While quantitative modelling has become prominent in the workshop, we very much welcome qualitative research. Furthermore, we are particularly keen to discuss new approaches focussing on analysis of registry data, (linked) open data and social media feeds, specialised evaluation approaches and mixed-methods designs that innovatively combine qualitative and quantitative approaches. The workshop has always maintained very high standards in the research it selects and it is intended that this approach will continue.

Description: We look forward to receiving a broad range of papers concerning housing exclusion and homelessness in various settings, as well as welfare policy analyses and evaluations. We appreciate a variety of theoretical and practical approaches, as well as a variety of methods employed, that reflect current interests of the researchers, and we hope to have a fruitful discussion on those issues in a comparative perspective. One of the group sessions will specifically address temporary housing. The WELPHASE Working Group welcomes papers at different stages of development varying from papers already accepted by a journal to drafts.

Description: We welcome contributions from researchers and practitioners who want to present and discuss feminist issues, methods, perspectives and practices in Housing. Topics could be: (lack of) segregated data; invisible user groups; LBGTQI; housing precarity; women only projects; masculinity; implementing intersectional approaches; resistances; mechanisms of exclusion in the housing market; gender mainstreaming housing policies/Housing law; feminist ecology and so on. We argue that feminist approaches are crucial to sustainable housing and look forward to advancing Housing Research and Policy in this direction with you!

Description: At our session, we especially welcome papers focusing on research examining (1) demographic events such as leaving the parental home, childbirth, employment transitions or changes in partnerships are linked to residential moves, as well as housing and neighbourhood transitions in different countries; (2) studies of family relations and housing pathways — including intergenerational social mobility within housing systems; (3) international and internal migration flows, in particular the ways these reshape and are affected by housing systems and family networks; (4) analyses of how family life is affected by housing conditions, design and systems of housing welfare and support; (5) reshaping of housing inequalities as related to the family dynamics and migration.

Description: In the current housing crisis, social housing providers are expanding their roles to tackle supply shortages through new approaches such as infill projects, office conversions, mixed-income rentals, temporary housing, and communal living models that promote social cohesion. At the same time, new financing tools, decarbonization policies, and EU regulations on competition and sustainability are reshaping their strategies. This workshop will explore how these transitions are transforming social housing practice, with a focus on emerging trends and policy innovation. Emphasizing mutual learning, policy transfer, and scaling up innovation, the workshop is relevant for academics, practitioners, and policymakers alike.

Description: The session focuses on the housing conditions, housing preferences and residential mobility of minority ethnic groups, on concentration and segregation of minority ethnic groups and on living in multicultural neighbourhoods. We welcome contributions of theoretical and empirical nature, employing quantitative as well as qualitative methods.

Description: Participants are welcome to submit papers on any topic relevant to the focus of the working group. Longer lives may imply changing housing needs and a change in residential mobility patterns. This calls for research on how to cater for adequate and affordable housing for older adults as well as housing innovations and adaptations in an ageing society. Papers can be submitted to the special issue "Housing Models in Ageing Societies" in the Journal of Housing and Social Policy.

Description: The ENHR Working Group ‘Policy and Research’ brings together up-to-date research and policy insights on the topic of housing policy, affordable and sustainable housing provision. We are interested, for example, in the variety of international, national and subnational housing policy instruments, the key actors and stakeholders and their strategies, policy/research responses to the housing crisis, the underlying political agendas, main institutional settings, particular financial models and the impact on processes and outcomes for people and places. WG coordinators Jaana and Steffen would be delighted to receive innovative contributions for insightful Working Group sessions in Oslo.

Description: The Residential Context of Health Working Group will convene its next workshop at the ENHR Conference in Oslo in 2026. This will be the latest in a long-running series of workshops convened by the Working Group, starting with the Gävle conference in 2000. Suitable papers would fit with a variety of broad themes, such as (but not limited to)

• The effect of housing quality and conditions on mental and physical health
• The role of behavioral, social, and cultural factors in shaping relations between housing and health
• The ways in which housing policy can be coordinated with other policies to improve health outcomes
• Gardens, nature and urban green spaces as health resources
• Housing affordability and its human effects
• Individual and social consequences of insecure tenure and residential instability

If you want to participate in the Oslo workshop, have other questions about the Working Group, and/or want to have your address added to the mailing list for the Working Group, please contact Emma Baker (emma.baker@adelaide.edu.au).

Description: The overall objective of the working group is to explore and develop concepts for analysing institutional and organisational change and dynamics in public, social and affordable housing provision. Government policies, management reforms and rapidly changing social and economic contexts have placed new expectations on social and public landlords.

Description: The Energy Efficiency and Environmental Sustainability of Housing (EEESH) Working Group provides a forum for research-based discussions about specific aspects of energy-efficient housing, as well as wider environmental sustainability aspects of housing. It aims to look at

• Key concepts and methodologies; technologies, lessons, implications for policymaking and industry, and wider economic, social, and institutional frameworks or debates
• Applications for different stages in the housing process, i.e., planning/ policy, design, certification, regulation/ legislation, construction, occupation, renovation/ demolition, pre- and POE.
• Relevance to SDG7, SDG11, SDG12 and SDG17

Description: This workshop invites empirical and theoretical papers that contribute to behavioural, social and cultural theory in housing studies. We encourage papers that engage with and build upon theory from the social sciences (e.g. sociology, political-science, heterodox economics, geography) and beyond (e.g. philosophy, psychology). Overall, the workshop will provide a valuable forum for housing-related scholars to engage with, apply and develop theory from across the academic disciplines.

Description: Welcome to this workshop on land, housing, and governance in metropolitan areas. This is the workshop for researchers who are interested in metropolitan dynamics, urban change, governance, land markets, and housing policy.
The analysis of housing policies and land policies must take the metropolitan context into account. On the one hand, the dynamics of metropolitan areas involves powerful mechanisms of price formation, spatial differentiation, wealth distribution and variations in liveability and social cohesion. On the other hand, metropolitan areas are also breeding ground for new initiatives and the rethinking of established policies and habits. 
Our ambition with this working group is to establish an arena for scholarly and practical discussions which depart on and take account of metropolitan dynamics. Under this umbrella we welcome papers on metropolitan housing policy initiatives across Europe (and beyond), papers on land market dynamics and institutions, policies, actors, and tools. Our aim is to conduct multi-disciplinary analysis on how housing processes can be steered with governance and spatial planning tools in urban areas – not necessarily on metropolitan area level but giving priority to the spatial dimension. In this WG we have a special interest in metropolitan land policies, which play a crucial role in efforts towards more affordability in housing.

Description: Within the broader theme of Housing and Prosperity in the 21st Century, this working group explores the reciprocal relationship between people and their residential environments. We focus on how individuals perceive, value and use the places where they live, and how these everyday interactions continuously reshape residential settings. Understanding these perceptions and behaviours offers essential insights into housing preferences, residential satisfaction and the meaning of home. Our aim is to highlight how human experience and residential form together shape prosperous and liveable environments.

Description: This interdisciplinary Working Group welcomes papers relating to the social and environmental sustainability of housing in urban and rural contexts. This might include papers on: urban and rural regeneration; retrofitting of different built forms (e.g. apartments and single family homes); sustainable housing provision in situations of emergency or disaster. We particularly welcome papers which identify innovative solutions to both social and environmental challenges and which promote resilience among more vulnerable households, including those in more prosperous regions.

Description: This years' working goup is titled "The Adequate Housing Imperative: The Pathway to Inclusive and Sustainable Cities in the Global South." Within the broader theme of Housing and Prosperity in the 21st Century, this working group explores the reciprocal relationship between people and their residential environments. We focus on how individuals perceive, value and use the places where they live, and how these everyday interactions continuously reshape residential settings. Understanding these perceptions and behaviours offers essential insights into housing preferences, residential satisfaction and the meaning of home. Our aim is to highlight how human experience and residential form together shape prosperous and liveable environments.

Description: The Housing Finance Working Group of the European Network for Housing Research (ENHR) invites submissions for its workshop at the 2026 conference in Oslo. Our mission is to initiate and stimulate research in housing finance, fostering an effective network among researchers. We welcome contributions that explore housing finance broadly, including but not limited to: Mortgage Systems, Regulation and Government Involvement, Social Housing Finance and Housing Affordability: Financial challenges and solutions for accessible housing. We encourage both theoretical and empirical studies, as well as policy-oriented research. This workshop offers a platform to present innovative research and engage in meaningful discussions on pressing issues in housing finance.

Description: This workshop panel focuses on the shifting geographies of housing finance in times of crisis, examining how financial capital moves between global and local scales in search of new sites of accumulation, and how these dynamics materialize in everyday life. We explore the intersection of financial capital and state policy, particularly as shaped through crisis management, emergency measures, and reconstruction initiatives worldwide.
By adopting actor-centred and “follow-the-money” approaches, the panel investigates the mechanisms through which housing policies are mobilized, negotiated, and reconfigured, as well as the implications of these transformations for housing justice, especially for communities and vulnerable populations. The panel also invites perspectives from below: How is housing financed individually? How do people affected by crisis mobilize resources for reconstruction?
While we place particular emphasis on housing finance in contexts of war and recovery, the scope is not limited to these settings. We especially welcome contributions related to Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as comparative or conceptual work that broadens these discussions.

Description: This workshop is a merger between the well-established Workshops housing market dynamics and housing economics. It relates to the functioning of housing markets within societies which housing markets are in many cases outbalanced and are affected by the great influx of migrants, refugees and a decreasing housing output. We would particularly welcome papers, beside economics also from other relevant disciplines, which address these issues. Papers dealing with modelling, theoretical and methodological approaches and with policy analysis and consumer perspectives are invited, and we would also welcome returning papers which enable a review of progress from previous workshops. This is a highly participative workshop, and all colleagues - at whatever stage of their work - are warmly welcomed to join the workshop.

Description: The working group focuses on the architecture of housing and residential practices under diverse social, historical, cultural, political and economic circumstances, and at distinct scales: the (singular) scale of the dwelling, and the (multiple) scale of its shared spaces. Within these two dimensions, the architecture of housing is examined through its design, management, and inhabitation. Through this undertaking, we seek to understand how architectural typologies and urban forms further the social dynamics through which housing operates as a governmental tool and a collective resource. The working group’s point of departure, however,  remains the concrete materiality and design of housing; and, how it articulates the relation between public and private spheres, between sociability and intimacy, between residential practice and lived experience.