Call for abstracts!

Alternative Answers to the Housing Question

6th August 2026 – 7th August 2026

Corvinus University of Budapest

Rethinking Housing Beyond the Market: Crisis, Critique, and Collective Futures

The College for Advanced Studies in Social Theory (Budapest) invites submissions for an upcoming interdisciplinary conference dedicated to addressing the contemporary housing crisis, with a primary focus on Europe.

Submit abstracts by the 15th of June in the form below.

Across the continent, access to secure, affordable, and dignified housing has become increasingly strained. Rising rents, financialization of housing, urban displacement, and deepening inequalities have exposed the limits of prevailing policy frameworks and market-driven solutions.

This conference seeks to critically interrogate the structural roots of the housing crisis while fostering dialogue around transformative alternatives. We particularly encourage contributions that move beyond neoliberal paradigms and instead explore non-market, decommodified, and community-centered approaches to housing. Our aim is to create a space for rigorous theoretical reflection alongside engaged, practice-oriented inquiry.

We welcome submissions from scholars, practitioners, and activists across disciplines—including sociology, political economy, urban studies, geography, anthropology, law, and related fields—who engage with housing as a social, political, and economic question.

At a moment when housing is increasingly treated as an asset class rather than a social good, this conference aims to challenge dominant assumptions and imagine alternative futures. We seek to foreground approaches that emphasize collective provision, democratic control, and social justice, and to foster conversations that bridge academic research with lived experience and political practice.

By bringing together diverse perspectives, the conference aspires to contribute to a broader rethinking of housing, not merely as a sector in crisis, but as a central terrain for envisioning more equitable and sustainable societies.

Thematic Scope

We invite abstracts that engage with (but are not limited to) the following themes:

• Structural analyses of the housing crisis: financialization, austerity, privatization, and the retreat of the welfare state
• Historical trajectories: how policy, capital flows, and institutional arrangements have shaped contemporary housing systems
• Non-market housing models: public housing, cooperative housing, community land trusts, and commons-based approaches
• Community-led and grassroots initiatives: collective ownership, mutual aid, tenant organizing, and resistance movements
• Policy alternatives and system-level transformations: rent control, decommodification strategies, and post-capitalist frameworks
• Housing, inequality, and social reproduction: intersections with class, race, gender, and migration
• Urban-rural dynamics and regional disparities within European housing systems

We are equally interested in contributions that propose direct solutions, as well as those offering critical diagnoses of how the crisis has developed and persists.

Proposals for individual papers should include a title, an abstract of no more than 500 words and up to five keywords.

The author’s name, email address and institutional or organisational affiliation (where applicable), should only be written in the abstract submission form, not the submitted document itself. Where there is more than one participant, we require a clear indication of a corresponding author. Panel proposals (3–4 papers, roundtables or book discussions) should include a panel title, a 500-word panel abstract, titles and abstracts for each contribution (if it’s a preconstituted panel), and contact details for all participants.

We may be able to offer travel assistance funding for those who would not be able to attend otherwise. Further information about this can be found in the application form.

Information regarding the acceptance of proposals will be provided by the end of June.

For further inquiries, contact us at TEKconference26@gmail.com