Emily, Cat and Christian at the European Observatory on Homelessness

In September, three members of the ACRC Academy – Emily Adams, Christian Newman and Cat Tottie - attended the FEANTSA European Observatory on Homelessness annual conference hosted in Lisbon. This blog outlines their experience, including what they learned from speakers and their own contributions.

Christian Newman, Cat Tottie and Emily Adams outside the conference

Christian - Day One

The conference began at midday on Thursday. The opening plenary offered overviews of housing and homelessness trends and policies across Europe, giving insight into the systemic reasons behind rising homelessness across the continent. It also explored how homelessness policies interact with broader anti-poverty measures, highlighting areas where the two domains could be more closely aligned. The plenary closed by zooming into the Portuguese context — a useful comparison, given the challenges the UK and Portugal share: an increasing reliance on emergency responses, fragmented support systems, and the difficulty of promoting long-term community integration and rights-based approaches.
A range of breakout seminars followed, including Measurements of Homelessness, Women and Homelessness, Youth Homelessness and Prevention, and Criminalisation of Homelessness. Throughout the conference, it was fascinating to compare the sometimes vastly different policy landscapes that colleagues across countries work within.
I also helped facilitate a session for the European Observatory on Homelessness's Early Career Research Club. This gave ECRs at the conference a chance to network and help shape the Club's future direction. There was real energy in the room, and it proved a friendly space to meet fellow PhD students from across Europe working on homelessness.

Name badges of the three academy attendees

Cat - Day Two

Day two began early, but thankfully we had retained clear heads despite the conference dinner the night before. The opening session was an opportunity for us early career researchers to get together and talk about the challenges and opportunities of working in homelessness in a pan-European context.
The second session I attended involved discussions about measuring homelessness using the ETHOS Light and European Homelessness Count methodology, which attempts to measure homelessness beyond traditional rough sleeping-focused headcount methodologies. This was incredibly interesting in the context of discussions around the reliability of homelessness data in the UK.

A view of the stage at the FEANTSA conference

The final presentation of the day came from a panel of FEANTSA academics old and new, including Joe Doherty and Bill Edgar, both of whom established the Observatory in 1998. They gave an overview of the similarities and changes in context from then until now and offered a potentially updated typology of homelessness services mapped across the ETHOS framework. We then heard from Eoin O’Sullivan, Nóra Teller and the Municipal Coordinator for the Homelessness Strategy in Lisbon, who gave an overview of the city’s plans to relieve homelessness for as many people as possible.

Emily Adams presenting her poster

Emily (presenting her poster!)

Throughout the conference, I presented a poster on findings from my PhD research: qualitative interviews with older people experiencing homelessness in Edinburgh about their digital engagement. The findings highlight the importance of avoiding assumptions and misinformed narratives about the purposeful disengagement with technology among older people experiencing homelessness. While technology use was common among participants, maintaining consistent access can be challenging for some. The responsibility here should not fall on people experiencing homelessness; instead, it arises from larger systemic and infrastructural barriers that are outside of any individual's control.
While presenting the poster, I spoke with academics and charity-sector homelessness experts from Ireland, England, Italy, and the USA about commonalities in ageing homeless populations. All agreed that, unfortunately, the number of older people experiencing homelessness is increasing and therefore this must advocate for bespoke interventions for this group.
Among those I spoke with was senior academic Judith Gonyea, who has conducted important pioneering research exploring the experiences of older women experiencing homelessness. Judith’s findings highlighted the importance of transforming both the physical and social environments of shelters, using trauma- and ageing-informed approaches, to better support this growing older homeless population and their pathway to stable housing. Judith’s presentation was a highlight of the conference for all three ACRC Academy students in attendance.
 

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