The launch of the Rent Cultures Network was held at Queen Mary University of London, in collaboration with University of Oxford. Our launch event, ‘Writing Rent Now’, was a roundtable and reception with the poet and novelist Holly Pester (Essex), in conversation with the critic and publisher Rachael Allen (QMUL), alongside Network Leads Matt Ingleby (QMUL) and Ushashi Dasgupta (Oxford) – two specialists on rent and fiction in the nineteenth century. The event celebrated the imminent publication of Holly’s novel, The Lodgers (2024). It was held in association with the QMUL Centre for Contemporary Writing, and QMUL City Centre, and took place on Friday the 24^th of November, 6.15pm, at the Peston Lecture Theatre, Graduate Centre, Queen Mary (Mile End Campus), London.

The network explores the landlord/tenant relation as a structuring force in everyday life. As the housing crisis intensifies, matters of rent have never seemed more urgent—but we’re equally conscious that they’re far from new, and that they look different across contexts. We’re interested in asking what rent reveals about the poetics, politics, and histories of space, and in tracing the lived experience of the tenant. Through a programme of roundtables, talks, readings, and screenings, we hope to bring together writers, artists, activists, and academics from a range of disciplines. We’d like to showcase and celebrate the diversity of current work on rent, on the one hand, and to offer an opportunity to identify common questions, on the other. 

If you’re interested in the network and would like to participate or find out more, please email us: Matt Ingleby at m.ingleby@qmul.ac.uk and Ushashi Dasgupta at ushashi.dasgupta@ell.ox.ac.uk. Our project website is growing, but do visit us on https://rentcultures.org.