ACHR Speaker Series
See below for recorded webinars and details about former and upcoming Speaker Series talks.
13 August 2026, 2:00 - 3:00pm (ACST)
Dr Declan Kuch
Buildings as infrastructure of care: mould, health and housing tenure in Australia
When cold, damp and mould take hold, who has the power to get a home fixed—and what can housing policy do about it?
Housing and health research often treats tenure as an explanation for unequal health outcomes: renters tend to be less healthy than homeowners, and this is commonly understood as a tenure effect. This talk argues that tenure is upstream: it determines who controls building care, a concept we use to capture the accumulated practice of maintaining, repairing, ventilating, and responding to material need.
Drawing on major Australian housing datasets, Declan challenges conventional explanations of the health gap between renters and homeowners and ask whether minimum standards can improve health without changing how buildings are maintained and repaired. This webinar will be of particular interest to housing and health researchers, policymakers, housing providers and anyone concerned with making Australian homes healthier.
Dr Declan Kuch is the Net Zero Social Researcher at the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW), where his work spans energy standards for rental housing, virtual power plants and industrial decarbonisation. He holds a PhD in Environmental Policy from UNSW and an Adjunct Research Fellowship at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University. Declan is the author of The Rise and Fall of Carbon Emissions Trading (Palgrave), and author of recent articles in Science, Technology & Human Values and Social Studies of Science. He co-founded the Australian Energy Social Science Research Network and has advised the Australian Council of Learned Academies on energy and technology policy.
21 May 2026, 3:30 - 5:00pm (ACST)
Professor Neil Coffee
A new way of seeing Australia: from postcode averages to address-level insight
What if we could understand access to services—not at the level of broad regions or statistical averages—but for every single home in the country?
In this seminar, Deakin University Professor Neil Coffee (and ACHR Adjunct Professor) introduces a major step-change in how we measure and map population, health, and service access in Australia. Drawing on a groundbreaking ARC-funded eInfrastructure, this work moves beyond decades-old spatial approaches to deliver something far more powerful: address-level intelligence for 10.8 million dwellings nationwide.
This new Residential Dwelling Reference Frame (RDRF) combines geospatial data with advanced spatial microsimulation to generate detailed population and accessibility insights for every location. The result? A platform that allows researchers, policymakers, and industry to model real-world access to healthcare, education, and other essential services with unprecedented precision.
This talk showcases how the infrastructure works, why it matters, and how it is already being used in practice. It marks the beginning of a shift away from blunt administrative boundaries toward a more accurate, responsive, and policy-relevant evidence system.
Professor Neil Coffee is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Adelaide 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.
26 March 2026, 2:00 - 4:00pm (ACDT)
Dr Sha Liu
Changing foreign investment policies and their impact on the build-to-rent housing sector in Australia
Australia is entering a critical juncture in its housing system with the emergence of institutional Build-to-Rent (BTR) housing. Since late 2023, coordinated federal and state policy interventions – including changes to foreign investment regulations – have been introduced to stimulate BTR supply and attract institutional capital into the housing system. This talk examines the evolution of Australia’s foreign investment policy settings from 2008, following the Global Financial Crisis, to 2025 as the housing affordability crisis deepened in the post-COVID period. It explores how revised policy settings, together with planning and tax concessions, are being used to support BTR development—pointing to a fundamental shift in how housing assets are owned, governed, and capitalised in Australia.
The roundtable invites participants to reflect on the deeper structural drivers of Australia’s housing crisis, whether BTR represents an effective policy response, and its long-term implications for housing affordability, welfare distribution, and the future housing system, helping identify priorities for research and policy engagement.
2:00 – 2:15pm - Opening and brief self-introduction of participants (Chair)
2:15 – 2:40pm - Presentation – Sha Liu
2:40 – 3:30pm - Roundtable discussion
3:30 – 4:00pm - Drinks, refreshments and informal discussion
Dr Sha Liu is a housing and urban planning scholar at the Australian Centre for Housing Research, Adelaide University. Her research focuses on the financialisation of housing and the role of global capital in shaping housing systems, urban development, and welfare regimes. Her recent work examines the rise of institutional investment in housing – particularly BTR – and its implications for housing affordability and governance in Australia and internationally.
This event was funded by the Henry Halloran Urban & Regional Research Initiative (HHURRI), the Australian Centre for Housing Research (ACHR), and the School of Society and Culture, Adelaide University.
20 February 2026, 3:30 - 5:00pm (ACDT)
Professor Mark Stephens
What role can social housing play in tackling Australia’s housing crisis?
Australia has a well-developed public discourse on housing – which isn’t surprising given the scale of affordability challenges. Media debate is often well-informed which is reflected in conversations with the public. But the role of social housing is marginalised in these debates. If it features at all, it tends to be as an afterthought. Utilising interviews conducted from within the social sector during his International Fellowship, Mark Stephens explores how social housing became marginalised in the debate and asks if this might change – and if so, how?
The event concludes with a panel discussion featuring Michael Fotheringham and Stacey Northover.
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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 is an Honorary Professor at Adelaide University. Mark visited the Australian Centre for Housing Research through an Adelaide University International Professorial Fellowship.
Stacey Northover is the dynamic Executive General Manager of Housing Services at Believe Housing Australia. A Graduate Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, Stacey is at the helm of one of South Australia's largest not-for-profit Community Housing Providers, which serves over 4,800 tenants across more than 2,100 social and affordable homes. Stacey is a relentless champion for policy reform and securing essential funding streams, especially in the face of rising rental and living costs.
Michael Fotheringham was the Managing Director of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) from 2017 to 2026 where he led the national housing research agenda and curated a comprehensive policy research evidence base on housing, homelessness and urban issues. Michael is a member of the National Council of National Shelter, and serves on several expert advisory panels including the Australian Government’s Urban Policy Forum, the Ministerial Homelessness Reform Advisory Group, and the ANZSOG Research Council.
5 February 2026, 3:30 - 5:00pm (ACDT)
Associate Professor Rowan Arundel
Wealthscapes: unpacking growing spatial and societal divides in housing wealth
Residential real estate represents by far the largest store of wealth globally and is fundamental in structuring societal inequalities.
Recent decades have seen housing markets transformed through ongoing integration with global capital, financialization and household wealth strategies. Intensified flows of capital into property, however, appear increasingly uneven across both space and populations.
Presenting his research in several European contexts, Rowan Arundel unpacks how housing wealth has become increasingly concentrated spatially – across regions, cities, or neighbourhoods – and how this drives growing wealth inequalities.
He further introduces his upcoming research tackling a big-picture empirical assessment of the differing role of housing in either amplifying or mitigating inequalities across countries.
Dr 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.