Dr Joanne Bretherton is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Social Policy and Criminology, based in the School of Business and Society at the University of York. She is an expert on women’s homelessness, homelessness, domestic abuse and housing precarity. Her current work centres on evaluations of the introduction of Housing First services across the UK, strategies to understand and alleviate women’s homelessness and interventions for women at risk of homelessness due to gender-based (domestic) violence.

During almost 20 years of research she has led or co-led around 35 research projects with funders including central and devolved Government(s), research councils, international bodies and homelessness and domestic abuse charities. Joanne’s work on women’s experience of homelessness, specifically, has global recognition and she is frequently invited to contribute to discussions on the topic nationally and internationally.

In her work with the ESRC Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre, expanding the homelessness parameters of enquiry away from rough sleeping to accommodation settings, Joanne will look at how people that are homeless interact with the Police in these environments. Much less is known about policing interactions with the much larger population of homeless people who live across a range of settings such as in emergency overnight accommodation, hostels, Housing First tenancies or supported accommodation, despite the fact they often share similar vulnerabilities such as substance misuse, mental and physical ill-health, experiences of domestic and sexual abuse and have frequent interactions with the criminal justice system. This will be applied through a gendered lens with the experience of women highlighted.