Kent Law School lecturer Dr Carin Tunåker is a legal anthropologist who has worked in the homelessness sector for over a decade. She worked directly with young people experiencing homelessness in Kent as a support worker before moving to research in the same area. Her research focuses on different aspects of so-called ‘hidden homelessness’, which refers to populations that are often either hidden from sight or hidden within statistics. Often these are groups with intersecting social disadvantages, such as being LGBTQ+, being an ethnic minority, having a disability or being neurodiverse. Carin has also researched homelessness in rural areas, which was reported extensively in the news last year.
On Tuesday, Carin gave evidence to the Parliamentary Select Committee on rough sleeping. You can watch the committee here or hear a short summary in the Radio 4 programme ‘Today in Parliament’ (at about 14 minutes in). To learn more about Carin’s academic work into homelessness law, you can read her co-authored paper on ‘Queer Utopias in Housing and Homelessness’ here.
Carin has been collaborating with University of Valencia, Spain, for the past two years, working on sharing comparative knowledge on rough sleeper counts in the UK and Spain. In September she delivered a keynote speech at their international congress of housing inequalities. The keynote discussed hidden homelessness, inequalities and epistemic injustice.At Kent Law School, Carin teaches on several modules including Homelessness Policy and Law.