I had the exciting opportunity to attend the 2024 European Network for Housing Research (ENHR) as a Graduate Research Assistant with HOME-RL. It was my first in-person conference (and my first trip to Europe!), making it a very rewarding experience.

Each year, ENHR hosts a conference in a different European city. The 2024 conference took place in Delft, the Netherlands, at the Delft University of Technology. I participated in the Residential Context of Health Working Group, where I presented and received feedback on a first-author manuscript on mental health among folks experiencing food and housing insecurity in New Brunswick. Recent studies suggest that folks experiencing both food and housing insecurity have worse mental health than those experiencing either food insecurity or housing insecurity. However, research in this area is limited. In my first-author manuscript, we were interested in exploring this topic in a sample of New Brunswickers on the waitlist for subsidized housing. The data for this study came from the New Brunswick Housing Study led by HOME-RL founder and co-director, Dr. Julia Woodhall-Melnik. Our findings suggest that greater food insecurity was associated with greater levels of psychological distress and depression. While we can’t say from our results that food insecurity causes poorer mental health, we can say that the folks experiencing greater food insecurity were more distressed and had more symptoms of depression. The peer-reviewed article based on this manuscript can be found here.

What makes the Residential Context of Health Workshop unique is their workshop format: unlike traditional conferences that tend to feature formal poster and oral presentations, this workshop focuses on creating an environment of collaboration where researchers studying similar topics review each others’ manuscripts. Over the course of the conference, this group meets several times to discuss the various papers. I had the opportunity to learn about research projects from around the world including studies on like the link between green spaces and health, the effects of neighbourhood violence exposure on substance use, and how relationships with neighbours can affect well-being.

In addition to the workshops, ENHR conferences offer evening excursions that give conference attendees a chance to explore the host city and learn more about its housing context. During one of the excursions, I had the opportunity to visit The Hague, a nearby city in the Netherlands, where we enjoyed a beautiful dinner on the beach.

During my five days in Delft, I also had time for sightseeing between conference events. The main square, the Markt, features beautiful architecture, including the Municipal Building. The rest of the city is equally beautiful, with landmarks like the Oude Kerk (‘Old Church’). As part of my sightseeing, I also toured the Royal Delft Museum, home to the famous blue pottery that continues to be handmade and hand-painted in Delft today!

Of course, international travel and conference fees can be pricey! I am incredibly grateful for the funding I received from various sources that covered my travel to and attendance at the 2024 ENHR conference. This included a Knowledge Translation Grant from ResearchNB and sub-grants from the HOME-RL and the Department of Social Science at UNB Saint John. The insights and experiences I gained are invaluable to my current doctoral research and my research work with HOME-RL.

By Allyson Lamont

Allyson (she/her) is a Clinical Psychology PhD student at UNB. She graduated from UNB Saint John with a Bachelor of Science in Biology-Psychology (Honours in Psychology) in 2021 and with a Master's in Psychology in 2022. Her research interests are in the social determinants of mental health and she is particularly interested in studying how experiencing food insecurity relates to mental health and the use of mental health services.