PhD Courses in Denmark

Description: Across planning, urban design, industrial design, and architecture there is a cultural preunderstanding that these fields of practice are benevolent and ‘good. However, at times these fields are complicit in social exclusion. At times due to ‘unintended consequences of design’ and at other times due to normative agendas related to power more or less in the open. This course will establish a theoretical framework for operational analysis of empirical cases across these fields. The materialization of power in various design solutions and plans require a conceptual scaffolding unearthing the relationship between human bodies, material artefacts, spaces, and technologies. The course will draw upon the latest contemporary research into power and design drawing on post-phenomenology, new materialism, and actor-network perspectives and give examples from the lecturer’s research. Participants will connect these ideas and frameworks to their own PhD projects in workshops, exercises, and through plenary project presentations. Participants must read a moderate number of readings in advance of the course. 

Prerequisites: Participants with master’s degrees in urban design, architecture, industrial design, urban planning, traffic engineering, sociology, urban geography or similar.

Learning objectives: The course is based on a didactic that moves between lecturing and tutoring from the lecturers and exercises enabling the participants to explore and test theories and concepts on their own PhD projects. Learning to reflect upon how one’s PhD project connects to norms and power based on the explored state-of-the-art research is the key learning objective. 

Organizer: Ole B. Jensen

Lecturers: Ole B. Jensen and external lecturers TBA

ECTS: 3 ECTS (or 5 ECTS  for a successfully evaluated post-course assignment submission)

Time: 16,17,18 June 2025

Place: Aalborg University

Zip code: 9220

City: Aalborg

Maximal number of participants: 15

Deadline: 26 May, 2025