Management Team

Professor Nicola Livingstone is a member of the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence management team. Nicola is based at the University of Glasgow, where she is Professor in Real Estate, and co-lead of the ‘Place and Built Environment‘ subject group in the Division of Urban Studies and Social Policy.

Prior to joining Glasgow in 2023, Nicola worked at the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL (2014-23) and Heriot-Watt University (2011-2014), where she completed her PhD in 2011. 

Nicola’s research is multi-faceted within urban social theory, examining the creation, perpetuation and perceptions of built environments through a variety of distinct but interdisciplinary perspectives – real estate, planning and governance, and the social form of the built environment. Within these three themes her research considers: 

• Real Estate: Emergence of residential property as an asset class in the UK; institutional investment trends; the build-to-rent sector; post-covid impacts on office markets; the retail sector and its ongoing restructuring.
• Planning & Governance: Market and policy-led mechanisms and outcomes; housing market dynamics; purpose-built student accommodation and studentification; densification; permitted development rights (PDR).
• Social form of the Built Environment: How built form mediates and manifests social relations and experiences from a political economy perspective; charity as a concept; food insecurity and poverty; social determinants of health.

Nicola has been recently working with CaCHE colleagues on the emergence of the Build-to-Rent (BtR) sector in Australia and the UK, examining market trends, drivers and barriers to implementation in cities during protracted and ongoing housing crises. Current research is examining local impacts of BtR in England, for the Nationwide Foundation.