Kelly Davies is a PhD student in the Department of Geography at King’s College London. She began her career working in the private sector at a multidisciplinary construction project management company, working on large-scale architectural design and build refurbishment projects across London. She subsequently transitioned into academia, working in research and programme management roles across a wide range of global mental health programmes at KCL.

Alongside her research, Kelly has taught in both adult and higher education settings, including as a Graduate Teaching Assistant on modules within the Department of Geography at KCL. She holds a Postgraduate Certificate and Diploma in Academic Practice in Higher Education and a Master’s in Academic Practice in Higher Education from KCL. Her MA examined how the architecture and design of learning environments can support education. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), awarded in 2015.

Research

Thesis Title: To what extent is ‘adequate housing’ truly adequate?

Kelly’s research examines how residents of Hastings and St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, understand and experience housing adequacy within a coastal urban context shaped by regeneration and socio-economic change. Drawing on methods informed by architectural and design practice, the research combines ethnographic observation, semi-structured interviews and behavioural mapping. Through thematic analysis it explores how housing and space are shaped by relationships between people, places, memories and attachments within a coastal urban environment.While international frameworks such as the United Nations’ seven dimensions of adequate housing provide crucial policy benchmarks, they can obscure how housing adequacy is subjectively negotiated, experienced and sustained in everyday life. This tension forms the central concern of Kelly’s thesis, which examines the relationship between policy-led definitions of adequacy and residents’ lived experiences. Housing adequacy thus emerges in the research not as a threshold to be met, but as a contested socio-spatial process produced through the interaction of regulatory structures, material conditions and lived experience. 

PhD Supervision 

Principal Supervisor: Professor Clare Herrick 

Secondary Supervisor: Dr. Robert Cowley

Further Details 

See Kelly's research profile