PhD Courses in Denmark

Language

English

Coordinators

Henrik Oxvig, Associate Professor, Institute of Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape
Martin Søberg, Associate Professor, Institute of Architecture and Culture

Other lecturers

Ulrik Schmidt, Associate Professor, Roskilde University
The course is organised in collaboration with Roskilde University, Department of Communications and Arts.

Course description 

Exploring New Materialism: Force explores the ideas of New Materialism and their implications for current theory, criticism and practice in the fields of architecture, design, art, the humanities and social sciences. The course pays special attention to the question of force and its potential for fostering ontological, epistemological and aesthetic considerations.

Inquiring into force is highly pertinent in the light of the climate and biodiversity crises as well as of contemporary challenges concerning democracy, sociopolitical conflict, vulnerability and global social stratification. But the question of force also points to fundamental questions concerning the operations of matter and the sociomaterial environment, for instance: energy and physical dynamics; matter and movement; violence, power, tension and aggression; material metamorphosis and transmutation; capture and emancipation; emergence and entropy; creation and destruction; images, imaginations and sensations of/as forces; life and death, etc.

The course investigates how attention to force vis-à-vis material conditions and conceptual perspectives can guide, challenge and stimulate theoretical and empirical studies of materiality and material artefacts. What are the implications of force for the ways we produce, perceive and conceptualize material objects and events and how we reflect on such processes?

Based on discussions of texts by thinkers such as Dipesh Chakrabarty, Karen Barad, Bruno Latour, Jane Bennett, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari – plus an international guest lecture – the course focuses on the integration of ideas from or related to New Materialism into the student’s own research.

Dates

6th-7th of November, 20th-21st of November 2025, four all-day sessions including reading sessions, keynote lecture, presentations, and discussions.

Venue

Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Design, Conservation

Application deadline

6th of September via https://katalog.kglakademi.dk/phdtilmeld.php