The ISPA project Team

Dr Vikki McCall is a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy & Housing in the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Stirling. Dr McCall is Principal Investigator on the Intersectional Stigma of Place-based Ageing (ISPA) project and has worked in partnership with the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA) and Housing LIN and other key housing sector partners developing the concept of Inclusive Living, and related toolkit that supports a more inclusive approach to housing support being developed on ISPA. Vikki was part of the team that won the Sociological Review Prize for Outstanding Scholarship (2017) for work on tackling urban stigmatisation in disadvantaged communities and is an expert in co-production. Vikki is Honorary Secretary for the Social Policy Association Executive Committee and Editorial Board member of the Social Policy & Society journal.

Twitter: @vikki_mccall & @HousingStirUni

Dr Louise Reid is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography & Sustainable Development at the University of St Andrews. Dr Reid is a social scientist working in the area of sustainable practices with a particular interest in the processes through which these influence and are influenced by everyday household life. Increasingly, her focus explores the role of digital and smart technologies within these relations. For instance, Dr Reid has led projects on Low Carbon Smart Homes (ESRC Future Research Leaders Project) and ‘Homes that Care’ (RSE Fellowship). Dr Reid is member of the Young Academy of Scotland (Royal Society of Edinburgh), vice-chair of the Board of Hanover Housing Scotland, and sits on the Editorial Board of Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.

Twitter: @louannereid

Dr Kim McKee is a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy & Housing in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Stirling. Her research is centred around housing inequalities and exclusion and has been supported by a wide range of funders including the ESRC, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust and a variety of public, voluntary and charitable sector organisations.  Kim is currently a member of the international editorial advisory boards of the journals Housing Studies and Housing Theory & Society.  She is also a co-opted member of the Housing Studies Association Executive Committee (and was previously Chair of the association).

Twitter: @kim_mckee

Rose Gilroy is Professor of Ageing, Planning and Policy in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University, UK. Her work focuses on the transactional relationship between older people and their place that embraces how people individually and collectively may influence their environments. Her latest book “Planning for an Ageing Society” was published by Lund Humphries in February 2021. Rose is committed to change and much of her work is action oriented. She is Chair of Newcastle Age Friendly City and the founder of the Future Homes Alliance that will be building multi-generational housing in the centre of Newcastle.

Twitter: @profroseg & @FutureHomesAll

Alasdair Rutherford is a Professor of Social Statistics at the University of Stirling. His research focus is the analysis of administrative and survey data in the fields of health, social care and the third sector. He has also been involved in a number of initiatives to build data analysis skills amongst third sector practitioners. Alasdair's academic background includes economics, sociology, psychology and artificial intelligence. Prior to becoming an academic, Alasdair worked for seven years in marketing and fundraising for a large social care charity. Alasdair is part of the Centre for Population Change; the Scottish Civil Society Data Partnership; and the Scottish Longitudinal Study of Ageing (HAGIS). He was also involved in the Scottish Administrative Data Research Centre.  Alasdair sits on the Scottish Third Sector Research Forum and the NCVO Research Advisory Group. He is a board member of the Stirling Carers Centre.

Twitter: @AltEcon

David is the Head of the School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol. He is interested in trying to better understand how the places in which individuals live interact with the outcomes that they experience over their life course. Key topics within this research include modelling and understanding neighbourhood effects, investigating how individuals and households locate in residential space and understanding how segregation develops and is maintained over (very) long periods of time. Crucial to this work is the notion that statistics can be used critically to challenge ‘myths’ in the academic literature. David is also interested in more methodological problems including how neighbourhoods are represented and different scales and in different places. He is on the editorial board of Housing Studies, and editor for Progress in Human Geography and on the advisor board for Understanding Society.

Twitter: @david_j_manley

Dr Dianne-Dominique Theakstone is a research fellow on the ‘Intersectional Stigma and Place-based Aging’ (ISPA) project. She is based at the University of Stirling in the department of Social Sciences. Dianne qualified as a social worker in 2022, before which her background in social care and housing research focused upon co-production methods involving disabled people. For example, her work on ‘My Support My Choice: People’s Experiences of Self-directed Support and Social Care in Scotland’ (2020) helped inform the development of new social work practice standards by Social Work Scotland around self-directed support. Dianne’s lived experience of disablement drives her passion for enabling others to access independent living, particularly through her role as trustee with Sight Scotland and Sight Scotland Veterans, as well as Horizon Housing.

Twitter: @HousingStirUni

Jeremy is CEO of the Housing Learning and Improvement Network (LIN), a sophisticated network bringing together housing, health and social care professionals in England, Wales, and Scotland to exemplify innovative housing solutions for an ageing population. Jeremy is also part of the ESRC funded Designing Homes for Healthy Cognitive Ageing (DesHCA), ESRC funding Improving Adult Care Together (IMPACT) Projects. He has also commissioned and published practice papers on inclusive housing and community-led approaches to housing for all ages, coined by the Housing LIN as ‘CollaborAGE’ and hosts a knowledge exchange platform with latest policy, research and practice developments on inclusive living on the Housing LIN ‘design hub’. Jeremy sits on the government’s UKRI Advisory Group on Healthy Ageing Challenge and was a member of MHCLG’s Home of 2030 design competition, which includes looking at new approaches to inclusive homes and communities for all ages.

Twitter: @HousingLIN

Debs is Member Solutions Manager at the Sottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA) and has over 15 years within the community sector, more recently within housing, with an emphasis on cross-sector innovative and collaborative solutions, service design, development and operational delivery. She has diverse knowledge base alongside specialist expertise in community engagement, tenancy sustainment and performance management that supports the strategic development of sustainable quality services and positive customer experience.  Debs focuses on innovative new processes or ways of working whilst remaining sensitive to the dynamics of groups, individuals, legislative and regulatory requirements.

Twitter: @InnovationSfha

Julia’s previous research activities include housing and disability; inequality and social exclusion; and user experiences of e-health and smart home technologies to support independent living. She recognises the importance of developing good practice in co-production and has supported and collaborated with a range of service users including older and disabled people, as well as housing, health and social care practitioners on a number of projects. Julia also has previously supported the needs of disabled people working as Peer Researchers and facilitated Project Advisory Boards.

Twitter: @JuliaLawrence77

Dr Kate Wilson is an early career researcher with interests in housing, place, stigma and class. She currently works as a Research Assistant on the ISPA project, and as PA to Dr Dianne Theakstone. She completed her PhD at the University of Strathclyde in 2022. Her thesis examined housing and urban regeneration in Glasgow throughout the 20th century, using archival material and interviews with tenants, activists and community workers to explore how people felt and negotiated urban policies and changes to their built environment, with an emphasis on cultural responses. Prior to joining the ISPA team, Kate completed an AHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, expanding her doctoral research. She also previously worked in the housing sector and as a Mental Health and Disability Adviser in higher education.

Twitter: @HousingStirUni

Dr Lisa Davison is a research fellow on the ‘Intersectional Stigma and Place-based Ageing’ (ISPA) project, based in the department of Social Sciences at the University of Stirling. Lisa’s background is in Gerontology, they completed their PhD in August 2021 at the University of Southampton. Alongside ISPA, they currently work as a quantitative research fellow on the Designing Homes for Healthy Cognitive Ageing (DesHCA) project, which focuses exploring a variety of data sources, to analyse the risk profile of individuals in relation to future home adaptations and understanding how those adaptations impact health and wellbeing. Their previous research has focused on the relationships between caregiving, loneliness, health, and wellbeing using English data, and between migration and pensions using a range of European data.  

Twitter: @LisaDavisonPhD

She has just completed her Ph.D. in Geography, School of Geography & Sustainable Development, University of St Andrews.