Shaping Built Environments through Collaboration: Theories, methods & practices
PhD School at the Faculty of SCIENCE at University of Copenhagen
This is a specialised course where 50% of the seats are reserved to PhD students enrolled at the Faculty of SCIENCE at UCPH and 50% of the seats are reserved to other applicants. Seats will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis and according to the applicable rules.
Anyone can apply for the course, but if you are not a PhD student, you will be placed on the waiting list until enrollment deadline. After the enrollment deadline, available seats will be allocated to applicants on the waiting list.
Aim and Content
The pressing polycrisis of climate, biodiversity, and social injusticies, presents us with complex problems that cannot be solved by individuals working in isolated fields. Rather, there is a need for collaborations that combine different forms of knowledge, methods and concepts with which to address these problems. Further, research shows that teams of people with various characteristics and lived experiences -e.g. regarding their gender, social background, language, bodily ability and more- can collaborate in ways that lead to more innovative thinking, what organisational researcher Scott Page calls the diversity bonus (Page, 2017). This course explores interdisciplinary and diverse collaborations in relation to the shaping of landscapes, cities and architecture, understood broadly as practices of design and planning, maintenance, use, policy, management and cultivation.
Examining collaboration means that we have to abandon a myth that exists in many traditional historical accounts and in popular culture in particular when it comes to architects and designers: the myth of the singular genius or hero-like figure who is innovative and problem-solving all by themselves. A growing amount of research in fields related to architecture, landscapes and cities explores questions of collaboration in a variety of ways. This includes present-day and historically based case studies, such as perspectives on how historical narratives and past legacies are used in future-making processes today.
The course addresses questions such as:
• How can we understand the ways in which specific collaboration across different disciplinary – but also national - boundaries have contributed to shaping buildings, cities and landscapes and keep on doing so?
• How can we understand collaborations that involve people of different backgrounds and lived experiences, across genders, abilities, orientations etc. as shapers of landscapes and cities?
• Who gains power, who is missing or marginalized in such collaborations, when do synergies or conflicts occur and how are they dealt with?
• What are the methodological challenges when information about collaboration is missing from the archives, which traditionally focus on built objects or the achievements of singular persons and how can these challenges be overcome?
• What questions of ethical research practice and the politics of research occur when studying landscape through the lens of collaboration?
• How might historical findings be activated to inform contemporary debates about interdisciplinary and inclusive spatial practices?
Participants and teachers: This PhD course invites students from landscape architecture, architecture, urbanism, urban planning, heritage studies, geography, cultural studies, urban history, organisational studies, sociology, ethnography and related fields to exchange knowledge and learn from each other regarding questions of collaboration in the shaping of architecture, cities and landscapes.
• The course teachers are from IGN and IND.
Pedagogical Formats: The course is structured mainly with dialogical workshops and shared learning tailored to the needs of the student group as well as to individual development.
After the course, each participant will write up and submit an individual reflection paper. This paper will document and reflect on what each student learns during the course.
A compendium with key literature will be made prior to the course and we will work with this together in groupwork during the course.
Learning outcomes
Intended learning outcome for the students who complete the course:
Knowledge
• Theories, methods and case-studies of the collaborations across disciplines, national borders and diverse backgrounds that shape architecture, landscape and cities.
• Theories of what makes collaborations work, when they hold great potential and when not.
Skills
• Ability to analyse case studies from past and present.
• Ability to theorise collaborative frameworks.
• Ability to reflect on the significance, potentials ad potential failures of collaborative frameworks.
• Writing skills.
Competences
• Heightened attention to collaborative frameworks of the past and the present.
• Ability to reflect on one’s own contribution to collaboration.
• Reflection on values and ethics in relation to one’s own approach to collaborations.
Target Group
PhD students from landscape architecture, architecture, urbanism, urban planning, heritage studies, geography, cultural studies, urban history, organisational studies, sociology, ethnography and related fields concerning questions of collaboration in relation to architecture, cities and landscapes.
This includes students for whom issues about collaboration have not been a main concern of their research until now.
Recommended Academic Qualifications
Students should hold a master’s degree and be enrolled as PhD-students at UCPH SCIENCE or another university.
Research Area
Landscape architecture, architecture, urbanism, urban planning, heritage studies, geography, cultural studies, urban history, organisational studies, sociology, ethnography.
Teaching and Learning Methods
Workshop I: 19.-20. March 2026: Two days of full-day programme including 1) mutual introduction and mapping the participants’ main research concerns 2) exercises to empower PhD-students, focusing on research networks and collaborative cultures, 3) begin work on reflection paper, 4) Lecture on frameworks for researching collaboration by course teachers on the 19. March 5) Two International Keynotes on the 20. March. (2 days workshop, 1 day preparation)
Individual and group work: 20. March – 24. April: students work individually and in groups on course literature. Mentoring sessions. (3 days workload)
Workshop II: 22.-24. April: In total two days of full-day programme (Wednesday afternoon, full-day Thursday and Friday morning) including 1) reading groups, 2) International Keynote, 3) workshop on collective creativity, innovation and technologies of knowledge 3) workshop Writing academic texts differently, 4) seminar: Science dissemination. (2 days workload)
Individual and group work 24. April- 15 May: Students work on Reflection paper, which must be handed in no later than 15. May. (4 days workload)
Type of Assessment
This course requires the creation of an ethics of trust, mutual respect and a curiosity-driven atmosphere.
We are dedicated to creating this learning environment because we believe that it creates the best basis for learning and innovation, and it creates an awareness that participants always co-create a collaborative environment – meaning that they are asked to walk-the-talk in terms of the course focus.
The course exercises can be carried out with a minimum of equipment, such as pens and paper, as we will be working interactively most of the time.
Literature
To be defined by the course participants and the international guest lectures. TBC.
Course coordinator
Svava Riesto, Professor, svri@ign.ku.dk
Guest Lecturers
• Prof. Sonja Dümpelmann, LMU Munich, landscape architecture, historian and co-leader of the Rachel Carson Centre for Enviroment and Society will contribute specialized knowledge about forms of collaboration with particular focus on the interface between humans and non-humans, such as trees, soil, water and animals in cities and landscapes.
• Prof. Despina Stratigakos, University at Buffalo, brings in expert knowledge on architectural history, the question of marginalized professional groups and the significance of power in any human collaboration. Her main focus will be on questions about who gets to be heard and who gets marginalized in collaboration processes, including methods and strategies towards ‘inclusive excellence’ in academia.
• Prof. Aisha Anees Malik, Quaid-i-Azam University, leader of the Centre of Excellence in Gender Studies, will contribute unique perspectives on collaboration across genders in non-Western context, particularly in Pakistan, and concepts and methodologies for studying collaborations from an intersectional perspective.
Dates
19 March - 15 May 2026
Course location
IGN, Rolighedsvej 23, Auditorium Landskab
Requirements for signing up
Special rules apply for this course:
Please note that all applicants will be placed on the waiting list upon registration.
After registering for the course, please send a motivational letter to the course coordinator by e-mail latest on 01 December 2025.
About one week after registration deadline, all applicants on the waiting list will be notified whether they are given a seat.
Please send the motivational letter to Svava Riesto svri@ign.ku.dk.
Course fee
• PhD student enrolled at SCIENCE: 0 DKK
• PhD student from Danish PhD school Open market: 0 DKK
• PhD student from Danish PhD school not Open market: 3000 DKK
• PhD student from foreign university:3000 DKK
• Master's student from Danish university: 0 DKK
• Master's student from foreign university: 3000 DKK
• Non-PhD student employed at a university (e.g., postdocs): 3000 DKK
• Non-PhD student not employed at a university (e.g., from a private company): 8400 DKK
Cancellation policy
• Cancellations made up to two weeks before the course starts are free of charge.
• Cancellations made less than two weeks before the course starts will be charged a fee of DKK 3.000
• Participants with less than 80% attendance cannot pass the course and will be charged a fee of DKK 5.000
• No-show will result in a fee of DKK 5.000
• Participants who fail to hand in any mandatory exams or assignments cannot pass the course and will be charged a fee of DKK 5.000
Course fee and participant fee
PhD courses offered at the Faculty of SCIENCE have course fees corresponding to different participant types.
In addition to the course fee, there might also be a participant fee.
If the course has a participant fee, this will apply to all participants regardless of participant
type - and in addition to the course fee.