A collective study lab

Erin McELROY

Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Washington

Erin McElroy is an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Washington, and is cofounder of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project—a counter-cartography and digital media collective that produces maps, tools, and stories to support the work of housing justice in gentrifying cities. Erin’s research focuses on the intersections of property, eviction, technology, data, and empire in the US and Romania, from contexts of racial dispossession and technocapitalism to housing justice and anti-imperial organizing. Their newest project, Landlord Tech Watch, is a collective effort dedicated to mapping out the harms associated with landlord surveillance technologies such as biometric cameras and tenant screening algorithms. Erin is also an editor of the Radical Housing Journal, an open access journal that brings together housing organizers and researchers transnationally.

Selected publications

McElroy, Erin. Silicon Valley Imperialism: Techno Fantasies and Frictions in Postsocialist Times. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2024.

McElroy, Erin. “Dis/Possessory Data Politics: From Tenant Screening to Anti-Eviction Organizing.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 47, no. 1 (2023): 54–70.

McElroy, Erin, and Manon Vergerio. “Automating Gentrification: Landlord Technologies and Housing Justice Organizing in New York City Homes.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 40, no. 4 (2022): 607–26.