Architecture Workroom Brussels - Brussels, Belgium
apply before December 15, 2023
Tasks: Research
Topics: Empower & Participate, Urban Transformation
Type: Full-time
Experience required: Intermediate
Language: English is sufficient
Architecture Workroom Brussels has a vacancy for a (m/f/x) PhD student REWORLDING with a background or strong interest in Urban Design and Transitions. REWORLDING invites applications for 11 Doctoral Candidates (DCs) to write a doctoral thesis on Participatory Design (PD) and to participate in an international and interdisciplinary training network of 6 academic and non-academic beneficiaries and 10 partner organizations across Europe. REWORLDING is an EU-funded Marie-Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Doctoral Network that provides high-level training to doctoral researchers. Successful DCs will be employed by a host institution and will enjoy the opportunity to take on secondments within the REWORLDING training network. As a DC, you will work on your research project and collaborate with fellow DCs and the consortium on important overarching questions through cross-discipline collaborations. www.uhasselt.be/reworlding
This project engages with the built environment, in places where the need or desire for a more fundamental, systemic transition is evident (flooding, drought, socio-economic fragility, energy transition, …). The researcher will engage in participatory ways with one or more of such contexts to investigate the methods for a structural and step-by-step transformation of these places in inclusive and sustainable ways. New roleplays between different societal stakeholders, and new participatory approaches and/or design-driven processes will be developed and tested during this PhD, contributing to the toolbox we need to successfully realize place-based system change and transition.
(1) Perform Participatory Action Research (PAR) within a pilot setting of transdisciplinary transformation of built environments for socio-ecological sustainability.
(2) Identify, structure, and advance tools, settings, and methods that connect local communities’ aspirations with governmental transition ambitions, to envision diverse co-ownership and collaboration models.
(3) Formulate the structural criteria and components of socio-environmental infrastructures and working methods to activate integrated local action and transformation.