housing is a cross-cutting issue which intersects with diverse social, political, and environmental aspects. our perspective on housing research therefore spans multiple disciplines, including urban studies, sociology, gender studies, and critical development studies.

we approach housing research collaboratively, foregrounding the voices and perspectives of residents, collaborative research methods, and democratic ways of making our research accessible.

we believe that collective social responsibility and mutual care are the antidotes to capitalist hyperindividualism, privatization, and commodification. to us, research is a tool for building collective knowledge and power to transform neoliberal economic, patriarchal, and colonial-extractivist models that structure society, and pervade spaces of knowledge production like academia and the university. collectivizing our research practice means explicitly resisting this paradigm, and centering a feminist ethos of care, collective responsibility, and solidarity in how we research, how we share knowledge, and how we transform it into concrete action.

arts-based methods toolkit: lino printing

august 2026

governance & power session leads @ ground/up: gender and the planned city

23 october 2026

arts-based methods toolkit: zine making

august 2026

imagining alternative housing futures linoleum print workshop

september 2025

a zine about feminist commoning in collaborative housing

january 2026

lecture: building feminist commons in collaborative housing

may 2026

our research always focuses on promoting social justice first. we continuously reflect critically on our positionality as researchers, and see research as a tool for disrupting systems of oppression, exploitation, and injustice.

our research centres creative and experimental approaches. we work with arts-based methods, and actively promote joyful creative practices as central tools for knowledge creation.

our research puts collaboration and collective approaches first. we believe that collective approaches that build solidarity and are based in community are the key to dismantling the individualism that upholds capitalist, patriarchal, and colonial systems of oppression.

we are mesh, a multidisciplinary research collective exploring housing through critical, creative, and collaborative approaches. bringing together our interests in urban studies, housing justice, feminist care, and collective organizing, we examine the systems and power relations that shape how we live. we experiment with participatory and arts-based methods to build knowledge collectively, challenge dominant ways of researching, and imagine more just and collective futures. we see research not only as a way of understanding the world, but as a practice through which we can work to transform it.

aga (she/her) is an amsterdam-based researcher with a background in urban studies, currently working at brno university of technology. She is interested in critical approaches to housing and likes to experiment with crafts and community-based research methodologies. she is also engaged in tenant organizing, hosts and coordinates regular linocut printing sessions at a community centre, and contributes to the program and maintenance of a grassroots cinema.

maddie (she/they) is a critical urban researcher interested in housing justice, community-led housing alternatives, and the systems that shape access to housing. she is interested participatory systems mapping, arts-based methods and how collaborative, hands-on practices can create space for shared learning and collective action. she engages in zine making both through tenant organizing projects and for fun.

marga (she/her) has a background in urban studies, and focuses on housing and habitat-related human rights in her research and practice. she is also a doula, and especially interested in reproductive justice, care, and how they intersect with housing justice. she is passionate about participatory and arts-based methods, and likes to engage in textile arts such as knitting outside of her research.