Özlem Celik is a Collegium Fellow at Turku Advanced Studies Institute (TIAS), University of Turku and a visiting scholar at the University of Helsinki. Özlem’s research concerns the political economy of urban development and change, with a focus on housing, green and climate financialization, role of the state, urban social movements and green transitions in the Nordic cities. Özlem’s  previous research has focused on the financialisation of housing, role of the state in housing provision, and the limitations and possibilities of spatial politics of solidarity through commoning practices in Turkey. Özlem is a qualitative researcher, interested in using participatory and collaborative methodological approaches in engagement with housing movements and activist groups. Özlem is the Co-founder and co-director of NUPE and Urban and Regional Political Economy Working Group. For more details: https://ozlem-celik.com/about

Matthew Howells is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Sustainability and Planning at Aalborg University. Matt’s work examines the evolving role of housing associations in Danish urban governance, particularly as related to the so-called the “ghetto legislation.” His broader interests center on the neoliberalisation of urban governance and the shifting responsibilities of the state. In the future, Matt is also keen to engage more deeply with non-market alternatives for housing provision in and beyond Denmark.

Mika Hyötyläinen is a researcher in public policy at the University of Helsinki. Mika’s primary research project focuses on municipal finance, land value capture and local state rentierism in the Nordic urban context. Mika also studies topics such as housing policy, social housing assetization, land rent theory, property rights, and the potentials of alternative property arrangements. He is the author of a new monograph titled Urban Inequality in Finland: Land, Housing and the Nordic Welfare State, which is available open access from Edinburgh University Press. He is also the editor of a Routledge anthology titled The Political Economy of Land: Rent, Financialisation and Resistance. Mika’s work is funded by the Kone Foundartion, seen here.

Erik Jönsson is Associate Professor at the Department of Human Geography, Uppsala University. His research focuses on the intersection of landscape geography and political ecology. He is currently exploring social sustainability in Norra Sorgenfri as well as the history and current utilisation of the People’s Parks. In hisprevious research he has combined political ecology, STS, and future studies to explore research environments and future visions within the “cellular-agricultural” field.

Defne Kadıoğlu is a Project Researcher at the Department of Urban Studies, Malmö University, and a member of the Institute of Urban Research, IUR. Defne is an urban political sociologist with an interest in urban policy, housing and urban political economy. In particular she has worked on gentrification processes and their intersection with territorial stigma and racism in Germany. She also worked in the context of Turkey, in particular on the political and social dimensions of urban transformation projects in formal and informal Istanbul neighborhoods. Currently she is conducting comparative projects on urban policy, racialized territorial stigma and housing in the context of the Swedish and German welfare states.