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All Outputs (16)

‘Fighting him’: Following distress in hostile housing regimes (2025)
Journal Article
Storer, E., Simpson, N., Hubbard, E., & Duale, S. (2025). ‘Fighting him’: Following distress in hostile housing regimes. Social Science and Medicine, 385, 118581. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.118581

This study explores the psychological impacts of the UK housing crisis among a collective of Somali women in Birmingham. We build a framework from anthropological theories of social distress, applied through a participatory methodology consisting of... Read More about ‘Fighting him’: Following distress in hostile housing regimes.

The right to complain can’t solve the housing crisis (2025)
Digital Artefact
Storer, E., Simpson, N., & Duale, S. (2025, October 27). The right to complain can’t solve the housing crisis. LSE British Politics and Policy Blog. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/awaabs-law-the-right-to-complain-cant-solve-the-housing-crisis/

Awaab’s Law, that has just come into effect, gives tenants of social housing new powers against neglectful landlords. But Elizabeth Storer and Nikita Simpson warn that the right to complain, while a step in the right direction, has limited powers ami... Read More about The right to complain can’t solve the housing crisis.

Hostile Environments: Mould, Race and Blame amidst Birmingham’s Housing Crisis (2025)
Journal Article
Simpson, N., Storer, E., & Duale, S. (2025). Hostile Environments: Mould, Race and Blame amidst Birmingham’s Housing Crisis. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/02637758251386715

The UK Government Home Office’s ‘hostile environment’ policy is aimed at making it difficult for migrants to stay in Britain. This approach has combined securitised practices of bordering and policing, with policies which have hollowed out state prov... Read More about Hostile Environments: Mould, Race and Blame amidst Birmingham’s Housing Crisis.

Securitized trust: on the multiple guises of the UK policy agenda during the Covid-19 pandemic (2024)
Journal Article
Wuerth, M., Storer, E., Simpson, N., & Sarafian, I. (2024). Securitized trust: on the multiple guises of the UK policy agenda during the Covid-19 pandemic. Critical Policy Studies, 1-21. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/19460171.2024.2429709

Against the backdrop of the uncertainty that characterized the COVID-19 pandemic, trust emerged as a key term employed by public officials and policymakers in the UK to represent the existence or dissolution of state–society relationships. Despite it... Read More about Securitized trust: on the multiple guises of the UK policy agenda during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Listening to Housing Distress: A methodology for understanding housing and mental health in context (2024)
Report
Storer, E., Simpson, N., Duale, S., & Gaskell, I. (2024, November 1). Listening to Housing Distress: A methodology for understanding housing and mental health in context. SOAS University of London. https://doi.org/10.25501/SOAS.00043019

This report presents a conceptual and methodological approach for understanding the mental health impacts of the UK’s housing crisis. The UK is currently in the midst of a housing crisis, felt across private and social tenancies. This crisis, which... Read More about Listening to Housing Distress: A methodology for understanding housing and mental health in context.

Tension: Mental Distress and Embodied Inequality in the Western Himalayas (2024)
Book
Simpson, N. (n.d.). Tension: Mental Distress and Embodied Inequality in the Western Himalayas. [Forthcoming].

In Tension, Nikita Kaur Simpson examines the effects of rapid development in the Himalayas on the minds and bodies of the Gaddi people who inhabit them through attention to the multifaceted state of distress they call “tension.” This “tension” takes... Read More about Tension: Mental Distress and Embodied Inequality in the Western Himalayas.

Encountering the Dain: Space-Time, Witchcraft Anxiety and Gaddi Tribal Belonging (2023)
Journal Article
Simpson, N. (2023). Encountering the Dain: Space-Time, Witchcraft Anxiety and Gaddi Tribal Belonging. Himalaya: the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, 42(2), 70-85. https://doi.org/10.2218/himalaya.2023.7809

Outwardly, most Gaddi people refute the relevance and danger of witchcraft in present times. At another level, however, rumors of jadu (witchcraft, or spells and curses performed by a witch) and opara (black magic, or curses that may be performed by... Read More about Encountering the Dain: Space-Time, Witchcraft Anxiety and Gaddi Tribal Belonging.

Ghar ki Tension: Domesticity and Distress in India’s Aspiring Middle Class (2023)
Journal Article
Simpson, N. (2023). Ghar ki Tension: Domesticity and Distress in India’s Aspiring Middle Class. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 29(3), 573-592. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13956

Tension is a polysemic term used across South Asia to describe the strains and scrapes of life, like ‘worry’ or ‘stress’ in Euro-American discourse. Yet in the formerly agro-pastoralist and upwardly mobile Gaddi community of Himalayan India, it is us... Read More about Ghar ki Tension: Domesticity and Distress in India’s Aspiring Middle Class.

Kamzori: Aging, Care, and Alienation in the Post-pastoral Himalaya (2022)
Journal Article
Simpson, N. (2022). Kamzori: Aging, Care, and Alienation in the Post-pastoral Himalaya. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 36(3), 391-411. https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.12707

As the Gaddi community of Himalayan India transition from agro–pastoralism to waged labor, configurations of kinship and care have shifted. Such shifts have introduced relational tensions, especially between elderly women, who have labored in the hou... Read More about Kamzori: Aging, Care, and Alienation in the Post-pastoral Himalaya.