Sponsored by the Cluster for Resilient Communities, Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries, University of Portsmouth

Join authors John Boughton and Professor Deborah Sugg Ryan, together with Stephen Morgan MP for a discussion of the past, present and future of housing. Topics will include social housing and home ownership.

John Boughton is a social historian whose book Municipal Dreams: the Rise and Fall of Council Housing, charting the chequered history of public housing from the late nineteenth century to the present, was published by Verso in April 2018 and recommended as an Observer Book of the Year. His popular blog, also called Municipal Dreams, on the same subject has had over 1.2 million views. He has published in the Historian and Labor History and gives talks on housing to a range of audiences. He is involved in a number of housing campaigns and lives in London.

Stephen Morgan was elected MP for Portsmouth South in 2017. Originally from Fratton, he is a long time community activist with an interest in housing and communities and has worked in local government and as councillor for Charles Dickens, a central ward in Portsmouth City Council. He has been chair of Portsmouth Cultural Consortium, a resident-led group committed to improving the city through cultural regeneration. In July 2019, he joined the Shadow Communities and Local Government team as a Shadow Minister. The brief includes policy areas such as adult social care, children's services, faith and community cohesion, welfare reform and debt services to community pubs.

Professor Deborah Sugg Ryan is a design historian, author and media presenter specialising in the history of the home and domestic technology. Her recent book Ideal Homes, 1918-39: Domestic Design and Suburban Modernism (Manchester University Press) on the interwar house-building boom was shortlisted for the Society of Architectural Historians Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion 2018 for an outstanding contribution to architectural history and will be reissued as a trade book in 2020. Her media credits include BBC Two’s A House Through Time for which she is series consultant and a presenter.