Theorizing and Theory Building
The Doctoral School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Aalborg Universitet
Welcome to Theorizing and Theory Building
This is a 5 ECTS, generic, interdisciplinary PhD course. It aims to acquaint Doctoral Candidates (DCs; AKA: PhD students) with the process of theorizing and theory building. We start from the premise that it is critical for DCs - regardless of their disciplines, research projects, or progress - to master the craft of theorizing and theory building. By the end of the course DCs will have gained knowledge and skills in:
(a) gaining sensitivity to theoretical development during the literature review and data collection processes, and
(b) analyzing and theorizing from extant and empirical data.
This is the 12th Edition of the TBRP PhD course. The course was jointly launched in 2013 by AAU Business School, Halmstad University and Oulu Business School and hosted by these institutions on a rotating basis. It will be hosted by AAUBS in 2026.
Every year our course gathers together DCs with diverse, multidisciplinary research interests:
- Decision-support tool for circular and sustainable transition
- Social sustainability assessment of AI-enhanced solutions in healthcare
- Inclusive pathways to women's entrepreneurship through practice-based interventions
- Managing and adapting under asymmetry
- Strategic platform grafting in healthcare
- Digitalized military decision-making in the war-fighting brigade
- Institutions, organizational competences in developing collaboration
- When the machine joins the team
- Enterprise foundations as an ownership form in family firms
- Workplace boredom
- Entrepreneurship education in the Arts and Humanities
- Clarifying corporate moral agency
- The effects of AI reviews and fake reviews on consumer trust
Alumni testimonials can be found here.
Delivery methods
The PhD course is delivered using a mixture of lecture-based and interactive teaching methods, including application essay, 2 group assignments and feedback to DCs on their identified issues and challenges and a public lecture offered to non-participants and delivered by course lecturers.
For additional information, updates, and registration, please refer to AAU PhD Moodle via the link provided on the right side of this page.