The PhD Programme in Manchester
Our postgraduate research programme is open to students with an interest in any aspect of architectural and urban design, urban infrastructure and innovation, including: urban change and development, conservation and management of historic environments and buildings, architecture in the making, agency and architecture, contested cities, politics of design, sustainable urbanism, architectural controversies and their links to urban development, urban networks, architectural and material imaginations, heritage led urban regeneration. The programme is intended for graduates of architecture and other disciplines, such as anthropology, political sciences, sociology, philosophy, psychology, geography, who wish to pursue a research on architecture and urban design.
The PhD Architecture programme allows students to conduct a comprehensive piece of research into an area of their own choice and definition. While the range of topics is broad, the common is the emphasis on the pragmatist reading of these subjects: the practices of the urban actors, the networks dynamics, the architectural innovations, and architecture’s engagement with the real. Drawing on the pragmatist way of thinking, which only recently entered the field of Architectural Theory, the programme offered by MARC is unique in the UK. Great importance is placed on transdisciplinarity, the originality of information used, the diversity of empirical data uncovered, the fieldwork creativity and the rigour of the methodological procedures adopted according to the different sets of data.
There is a growing community of PhD students, currently a total of 10 students. The programme has close links to the PhD “Planning and Landscape”, and the PhD “Geography” at the University of Manchester. MARC provides a unique intellectual environment for students with a variety of backgrounds to develop innovative thinking on the cross of the rigid disciplinary boundaries. The PhD programme is very dynamic with a strong international profile. Research students are encouraged to take part in the active programme of events at MARC and SED level: series of seminars, talks, and international workshops. They are also expected to take part in conferences outside the university. A training programme at SED level supports students’ individual research and members of MARC staff offer supervision in their own specialist areas.
Examples of recent and ongoing projects undertaken by postgraduate students include:
- Rhetoric and Realities: The Role of Models in Energy Related Decision-Making (PhD)
- Methodist Central Halls in Sacred Places (PhD)
- The Development and Use of Climate Models for Representing and Communicating Policy-Driven Scientific Research (PhD)
- Translating Zero Carbon into Building Design: Regulation, Theories and Practices (PhD)
- Beyond Targets: Articulating the Role of Public Art in Support of Sustainable Communities (PhD)
- Facilitating Sustainable Social Practices (PhD)
- Urban Design for Evidence-based Characterization in Modern Northern Chinese Cities – Base on Case of Harbin (PhD)
Research degree projects should be sufficiently limited in scope to be capable of being tackled within a reasonable time. You should plan to complete the duration of full time study specified (36 months; full-time 72 months part-time), and this inevitably limits the scope of fieldwork if the work requires this, and the time that such work will take. An appropriate and manageable subject is a prerequisite to successful research. The area and the scope of the research area must therefore be defined as precisely as possible.
Although we welcome applications for research degrees on any subject in relation to our specialisms, our academic staff also has particular topics they are keen on supervising: follow this link for a list of research opportunities in Architecture at SED.
If you would like to discuss the idea of doing a PhD in MARC, then please contact Dr. Albena Yaneva on e-mail: albena.yaneva@manchester.ac.uk.