Dr Andrea Sharam

Dr Andrea Sharam is a senior lecturer at the School of Property, Construction and Project Management at RMIT University. Andrea has extensive experience in social research on housing and homelessness, but is also highly experienced in other areas of social research including public policy and urban governance, with a focus on social and economic disadvantage. She has held roles in the community housing and homelessness sectors and was an elected councillor at the City of Moreland between 2004 and 2008 where she was an influential member of council’s Urban Planning Committee and held the portfolios for affordable housing and women. Her work over the past decade has raised the profile of single older women as a new cohort at risk of homelessness.

Her highly innovative conceptual and theoretical work on housing as a matching market is a significant scholarly, public policy and practical contribution to improving housing affordability. It has resulted in for example the ground-breaking financing deal between not-for-profit housing provider Nightingale Housing Ltd and its social impact investors. Prior to RMIT University, Dr Sharam spent six years at the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University. She is currently a member of Strategy Board for the Melbourne Housing Exposition.