Susan J. Smith

Biography

Susan is Professorial Fellow with the Bankwest Curtin Economics Research Centre and works with staff on cross-national housing research featuring comparisons between Australia and the UK. She is currently Honorary Professor of Social and Economic Geography and The Mistress of Girton College, University of Cambridge. She has previously held positions as Professor of Geography at Durham university and Ogilvie Professor of Geography at the University of Edinburgh in the UK.

Professor Smith has a distinguished career both as a human geographer and in the interdisciplinary world of housing studies. Her research is centrally concerned with the challenge of inequality. Her current research focuses squarely on inequalities in the housing economy, and particularly on those arising from the uneven integration of housing, mortgage and financial markets. Her work has been funded by research councils, government bodies and charitable trusts, including the ESRC, Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.

In addition to a program of research spanning more than 20 years, Professor Smith is experienced in research management, research strategy, and research assessment of all kinds. She has contributed to the work of the ESRC, Higher Education Funding Council for England, the Leverhulme Trust, and to research development and monitoring in higher education institutions within and beyond the UK. She has been awarded numerous prizes and fellowships for her contributions to the social sciences. In 2014, she was awarded the Victoria Medal by the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers for conspicuous merit in research in human geography. She is currently a Fellow of the British Academy, of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and of the Academy of Social Sciences.