Ian Cole is Emeritus Professor of Housing Studies at Sheffield Hallam University. Ian was Head of Housing and then Director of the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University from 1986 to 2010. He has written research reports, published journal articles and directed over forty research projects on issues such as leasehold, welfare reform, neighbourhood regeneration, UK housebuilding and housing market analysis. Ian has given evidence to many major government housing inquiries and was appointed Special Adviser on Housing to the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Select Committee from 2023 to 2024.

Dr Robert Furbey was Principal Lecturer in Urban Sociology and Politics at Sheffield Hallam University until his retirement in 2010. He was co-author of Housing and Urban Spatial Structure (1975). Robert has written academic papers on religion and faith communities in urban regeneration, tenant empowerment and housing professionalisation for major journals including Policy and Politics, Community Development Journal and Housing Theory and Society. Robert played a pioneering role in developing access, undergraduate and postgraduate courses in housing, including the National Certificate in Tenant Participation, and undertook research into participation for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in the late 1990s.