Dr Jonathan Webb MSc BA
Principal Research Fellow
Summary
Jonathan is a Principal Research Fellow at the Centre for Regional Economic Social Research (CRESR). He has a primary focus on housing research and helps co-ordinate the Centre's Housing and Place research cluster. Alongside his interest in housing, Jonathan has produced influential policy reports on topics ranging from industrial decarbonisation to regional economic policy. Jonathan’s academic research focuses on a plethora of housing and land issues, as well as an interest in policymaking and knowledge mobilisation within the policymaking process. The latter includes an interest in international and comparative politics.
About
Jonathan is currently leading on key aspects of CRESR’s contract work with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC). Previously, he worked as a Research Director at the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) where he was based in the Centre for Deliberative Research. He continues to apply this methodological expertise in deliberative methods to his work and he maintains an interest in analysing the role that can play in improving policymaking. Prior to NatCen, Jonathan spent several years at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and IPPR North think tanks. Here, he led the IPPRs work on housing and contributed to a range of policy reports focussed on regional governance, regional economic policy, housing quality and the net zero transition.
Jonathan obtained his PhD in politics in 2018 from the Department of Politics at the University of Sheffield. His early post-doctoral research resulted in several publications. It focussed broadly on analysing policymaking processes and policy outcomes in relation to European Union policy in South East Europe. This background informs his contemporary interest in analysing policymaking in the UK, with a view to using comparative politics approaches.
Research interests
- The politics of housing
- Homelessness
- Poverty and housing
- Housing affordability
- Decarbonisation of homes
- Deliberative research methods
- Culture Political Economy approaches
- Sustainability policy
- Housing and land policy in an international and comparative context
Publications
Journal articles
Webb, J. (2022). The ‘refugee crisis’ and its transformative impact on EU-Western Balkans relations. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 48 (6), 1363-1380. http://doi.org/10.1080/1369183x.2020.1851466
Parramore, S., & Webb, J. (2021). Rejecting the Neoliberal Balkan Land Grab Hypothesis: The Absence of the EU’s Transformative Power in Land Use Governance in Bosnia and Serbia. Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 23 (2), 358-377. http://doi.org/10.1080/19448953.2020.1867804