Our team 

Professor Emma Baker is Professor of Housing Research at Adelaide University and founding Director of the Australian Centre for Housing Research. She also serves as AHURI Research Centre Director and leads major national programs at the intersection of housing, health and inequality.​ Her research examines how housing systems shape people’s health, security and opportunities across the life course. She is particularly known for using longitudinal, spatial and administrative data to reveal the human consequences of housing affordability, insecurity and poor housing conditions. She has been a lead or chief investigator on more than $31 million in competitive research funding across the ARC, NHMRC and AHURI, and has held leadership roles in national initiatives on healthy housing, mental health and housing inequality.

Andrew Beer is Professor in the Property Program, College of Business and Law. He currently sits on the board of the SA Housing Trust. Beer was the Chair of the South Australian Government’s Homelessness Strategic Group from 2011 to 2017 and was the Chair of the RSA from 2013 to 2017. Andrew’s research interests encompass a range of issues including Australia’s housing markets, the drivers of regional growth, structural change within the economy, governance, place leadership, and Australia’s ageing population. He has published widely in academic journals and has authored several books. Professor Beer has extensive experience with research translation and well-developed links to the policy community.

Dr. Akshay Vij is a Professor in the College of Business and Law. Vij’s research has made significant contributions to the development of statistical methods for the study of human behavior, and their application to different empirical contexts, such as transport, urban and regional development, labour markets, and energy. Findings from his research have been published in some of the most prestigious academic journals in these disciplines; presented at multiple national and international academic and industry conferences, workshops and symposiums. Vij has collaborated extensively with industry and government partners to conduct research that addresses major practical challenges facing these different sectors. 

Mark Stephens is the distinguished Ian Mactaggart Chair in Land, Property & Urban Studies at the University of Glasgow. He has a long-standing interest in comparing housing systems internationally, with expertise in housing and poverty, and housing and the economy. His most recent book is The Routledge Handbook of Housing and Welfare (with Martin Grander). He was an International Fellow at the University of Adelaide in 2025 and is an Honorary Professor at Adelaide
University. In early 2026, Mark visited the Australian Centre for Housing
Research through an Adelaide University International Professorial
Fellowship.

Jon is an urban planner who has worked in the UK and Australia. He is passionate about his role as both a teacher and researcher and is motivated by a desire to carry out research in areas that are relevant to improving the sustainability of cities. He believes that the best urban policy is informed by evidence and strives through his teaching and research to make a difference to the cities in which he lives and works. Kellett has a long standing research interest in the energy demand of  cities and the variety of ways this demand is met along with the  environmental implications of particular energy policies. Another key focus of Kellett's research concerns the mechanisms by which urban development occurs. 

Lyrian Daniel's research focusses on the houses that we live in and the way that they shape our lives. Much of her work has centred on thermal conditions within homes, residents’ thermal comfort, indoor air quality and energy hardship. For example, recent work has investigated the prevalence and health effects of indoor cold. Current projects extend this to look at climate resilience within the Australian housing stock. A parallel stream of work takes a broader look at the quality and condition of houses, and the policy changes needed to realise large-scale uplift of housing standards. Daniel's research has been funded by the ARC, NHMRC, AHURI and Energy Consumers Australia. 

Rowan Arundel is Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam within the Political and Economic Geographies research group and an Adjunct at the Australian Centre for Housing Research. Rowan is recipient of the Dutch Research Council’s prestigious Veni and Vidi grants. His research focusses on dynamics of housing inequalities and interactions between housing, labour and welfare dimensions. His publications have centred on comparative examinations of contemporary housing career realignment, declining access to homeownership, intergenerational housing support, and drivers and outcomes of rising housing inequalities across societies.

Dr Linda Isherwood is a Senior Research Fellow at Adelaide University, and a member of the Australian Centre for Housing Research and the Stretton Institute. Linda's key research interests are housing, aged care, disability and public policy with a particular emphasis on policy and program evaluation. She is highly skilled in both qualitative and quantitative methodologies and in combining these approaches. Isherwood has been a chief investigator on numerous Category 1 projects within the fields of Indigenous housing and aged care. She is a social worker by background and has worked extensively in the mental health and disability sectors in Australia and the United Kingdom.
 

Helen Dinmore is a writer and researcher with a particular interest in housing, work, and the stories we tell about social and economic disadvantage. Dinmore is currently a Research Fellow on the NHMRC-funded Healthy Housing CRE, focusing on policy translation. She has also worked on the ARC-funded Linkage Project Future Work, Future Communities, researching the closure of Australia's automotive industry and retrenched workers' experiences in the labour market. Dinmore holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Adelaide.

Sijin Wang is a Level B Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Adelaide, working under the leadership of Professor Emma Baker. Her research focuses on the intersection of housing and health, leveraging cutting-edge techniques in Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) to address complex societal challenges. Before joining Adelaide University, she was a PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales, specializing in deep learning and large language models applied to finance. Her research has been accepted at top conferences, including the Financial Management Association (FMA), the American Accounting Association (AAA), and the Strategic Management Society (SMS).

Claire is an ECR (Early Career Researcher) Project Officer at the Australian Centre for Housing Research, Adelaide University. She is currently managing the ARC LIEF project titled 'Australian Housing Conditions Data Infrastructure'. Claire has contributed to a range of projects including the AHURI Unsolicited Data Project Understanding the impact of children’s housing in Australia, as well as a project with the South Australian Department for Housing and Urban Development (DHUD) investigating the housing preferences of South Australians. Claire has also worked as a Senior Research Assistant at Flinders University on the ARC Linkage project 'A History of Domestic Violence in Australia, 1850 to 2020'.

Kim Anh Nguyen is a PhD candidate at the Australian Centre for Housing Research, Adelaide University. Kim is being supervised by Emma Baker and Amy Clair. 

Amy Clair is an Associate Professor and Deputy Director of the Australian Centre for Housing Research at Adelaide University. A quantitative social policy researcher, her work focuses on the impact of housing policies on health and well-being from a comparative perspective with particular focus on Australia and the UK. Recent work has explored the role of housing in achieving reproductive justice, the impact of cold homes on mental health, the conflicts and complements between sustainable and affordable housing, changes to financial support for renters, and the potential of biomarker measures for understanding the relationship between housing and health. Amy is also a Research Associate of the ESRC Centre for Micro-Social Change in the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex. 

Professor Chris Leishman is a housing economist, and one of Australia’s leading housing researchers. He is also a non-executive director of Housing Choices Australia – a not for profit community housing provider active in South Australia, Western Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania. Chris is best known for his work on modelling housing supply and housing need in Australia and the UK. He is an editor of the academic journal Urban Studies and a past Editor-in-Chief of the Housing Studies journal. He works extensively with government at national, state and local levels and is focused on research projects that make a difference to people either directly, or through influencing policy change.

Richard is Professor of Housing and Chair of Political and Economic Geographies at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on housing processes as a driver of social, economic and urban transformations in Europe and Pacific Asia. He is currently Editor of Palgrave Macmillan's 'Contemporary City' book series and Chairs the board of the 'International Journal of Housing Policy'. He is also currently Adjunct Professor at the Australian Centre for Housing Research at Adelaide University, and was recently Distinguished Professor at Hong Kong Metropolitan University. His most recent book (2023) is titled Families, Housing and Property Wealth in a Neoliberal World.

Roger Burrows is Professor of Global Inequalities (part-time) at the University of Bristol, Emeritus Professor of Cities at Newcastle University, and Visiting Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is also an Adjunct Professor with the Australian Centre for Housing Research at Adelaide University. Burrows works across the arts, humanities and the social sciences more broadly and also has a keen interest in creative and social technologies. About one-half of his published outputs have been in the field of housing and urban studies with the rest being variously concerned with: digital cultures; health and social inequalities; the social life of methods; the sociology of higher education and various other topics. 

Ralph Bayer is a Professor of Economics in the College of Business and Law at Adelaide University. Bayer works in the areas of behavioural and experimental economics, applied game theory, public economics and industrial organisation. Bayer is the Founding Director of the Adelaide Laboratory for Experimental Economics. Together with PhD and Honours students, the Laboratory is currently working on projects such as Effective and Efficient Corporate Tax Enforcement, Information Quality in Auctions of Multiple Objects, Efficiency in Contests, Collusion in Retail Markets, and Hold-Up Problems in Strata Sales. 

Megan Moskos is a sociologist and recognised leader in Indigenous Australian housing research, renowned for conducting culturally sensitive, impactful research with Aboriginal people by Indigenous leaders and academic peers. In this research, she collaborates with leading academic and Indigenous community-based researchers that have been funded by the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Association (NATSIHA), the Department of Social Services (DSS), the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), Aboriginal Housing NT, and the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA). Her research is widely used by housing experts across Australia to develop better housing policy and programs for Indigenous peoples.  

Neil Coffee is an Adjunct Professor at the Australian Centre for Housing Research and Professor of Health Geography in Deakin Rural Health, Deakin University. He has been involved in the application of GIS to population, urban, social and health for 40 years. Over his career, Neil has contributed to the broader understandings of the application to GIS to place and health research and the conceptual and methodological challenges faced when applying spatial methods. His research applying spatial methods to social science has been at the developing edge in Australia, spanning applications of GIS with social science and public health.

Kristine Peters is the director of KPPM Strategy which was launched in 1995 to provide project management, research and strategic planning services to university, business, non-profit and government organisations. Peters’ adjunct status with Adelaide University provides industry context and commercial perspectives for internal university service planning as well as research design and implementation. She provides project management and strategic insights for complex commissioned research projects which require integration of findings into policy or client delivery systems. In her private consulting role, Dr Peters has delivered more than 400 major government projects across a number of agencies.

Sha Liu is a policy-driven researcher specialising in housing financialisation, urban regeneration, and comparative housing policy. Her research explores the intersection of international investment, housing markets, and urban development, with a strong emphasis on policy innovation. She has extensive experience managing externally funded research projects and conducting both qualitative and quantitative analyses, leading to high-impact publications in top-ranked journals. In addition to her research, Sha has a strong teaching record in urban planning, housing studies, and urban economics, with expertise in curriculum development and student mentorship at leading Australian universities. 

Peter Koulizos recently retired as the Program Director of the Master of Property. Koulizos taught in a variety of courses; from property development, valuation and investment to housing, town planning and urban renewal. As a researcher, his focus has been on property education, gentrification, residential property markets and most recently, home ownership. He contributes to newspapers and magazines and is sought after by TV and radio for his research and comments on the property market. Peter brings more than 20 years of experience in teaching and research to the Australian Centre for Housing Research. He has published three books; The Property Professor’s Top Australian Suburbs, Property vs Shares and The Diary of a Small Developer.

Kira Page is a PhD researcher and a geospatial analyst whose research explores the changing pathways through Australia’s housing system. Her PhD, Adaptive Housing Pathways in Australia’s Post-homeownership Future, has a particular focus on rentvesting - the practice of renting a primary residence while owning and renting out property elsewhere -  and considers rentvesting not only as a financial or housing strategy, but also in terms of its broader social, spatial and political implications. As a geospatial analyst, Kira brings specialist expertise in spatial data and geographic analysis to her research, providing a spatial perspective on housing pathways, inequality and the distribution of housing opportunities across Australia.

Carl Grant is a PhD researcher at the Australian Centre for Housing Research, Adelaide University, whose research examines housing systems, housing policy and the changing nature of housing tenure in Australia and internationally. His PhD takes a comparative approach to understanding the Australian housing system, examining how different housing tenures have been shaped by government policy, social and economic change, and the broader housing systems in which they operate. A key focus of his research is exploring international housing systems and policies to assess their relevance and potential applicability to the Australian context, particularly in responding to Australia’s current housing crisis and improving outcomes across different housing tenures.