Jane Ball

Jane Ball was an English solicitor who was attracted by curiosity and a love of France into research, obtaining a PhD scholarship at Sheffield University in 1997. This long adventure culminated in her book, Housing Disadvantaged People? Insiders and Outsiders in French Social Housing Allocation (2012).

What do you do when your research subject (English housing law) does not seem to exist in France? You collect the bits of law that do the job of housing people from different places: property law, contract law, organizations, finance, social law, public law, rights, legal history and varieties of European law.

Next, how do you theorize this lot in a way Anglo-American and French audiences will both understand? The answer lay in economic theory because of a commonly-understood vocabulary. Sociology was also required to show by interviewing people how and why social exclusion worked. This was not a quick process.

Jane is a retired senior lecturer from Newcastle University School of Law