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Shaping Built Environments through Collaboration
Provider: Faculty of Science

Activity no.: 5112-27-00-00There are 30 available seats 
Enrollment deadline: 01/12/2026
PlaceDepartment of Geoscience and Natural Resource Management
Date and time18.03.2027, at: 09:00 - 14.05.2027, at: 16:00
Regular seats30
LecturersHenriette Steiner
Svava Riesto
ECTS credits2.50
Contact personHenriette Steiner    E-mail address: hst@ign.ku.dk
Enrolment Handling/Course OrganiserPhD Administration SCIENCE    E-mail address: phdcourses@science.ku.dk
Enrolment guidelines
This is a specialised course where 50% of the seats are reserved for PhD students enrolled at the Faculty of SCIENCE at UCPH and 50% of the seats are reserved for PhD students at other faculties and universities. Seats will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis and according to the applicable rules.


Registration
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 1-page motivational letter and a 1-page CV to Svava Riesto by e-mail svri@ign.ku.dk not later than 1 December 2026.
About one week after registration deadline, all applicants on the waiting list will be notified whether they are offered a seat.

Aim and Content
The concomitant ecological and social crises present 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, skills, and concepts. Organizational researcher Scott Page, furthermore, points to inherent advantages in teams made up of people with various lived experiences – e.g. regarding their gender, social background, language, bodily ability and more. Diversity across skills and backgrounds can foster innovative thinking, what Page calls ‘the diversity bonus’ (2017).
This PhD course explores how cross-disciplinary and diverse collaborations, understood broadly as practices of design and planning, maintenance, use, policy, management, and cultivation, shape landscapes, cities and architecture historically, today and in future practice. This PhD course offers an interdisciplinary and curiosity-driven forum for addressing questions such as:
• How can we understand the ways in which specific collaboration across different disciplinary and national boundaries have contributed to shaping buildings, cities and landscapes and keep on doing so? How might historical findings be activated to inform contemporary debates?
• How can we understand collaborations that involve (and have involved) people of different backgrounds and lived experiences, across genders, abilities, orientations etc. as shapers of landscapes and cities? What questions of ethical research practice snap into focus when considering these markers of difference?
• Who gains power, who is missing or marginalized in such collaborations? When do synergies or conflicts occur, and how are they dealt with?
• What methodological approaches can be developed when information about collaboration is missing from historical archives or contemporary debates?

Reference:
Scott E. Page, The Diversity Bonus. How Great Teams Pay off in the Knowledge Economy (Princeton University Press, 2017).

Schedule
* Workshop I, 18-19 March 2027
Programme includes 1) mutual introduction and mapping of the participants’ main research concerns, 2) exercises to empower PhD students focusing on research networks and collaborative cultures, 3) work on reflection paper, 4) lectures by course teachers and/or international keynotes on frameworks for researching collaboration.

* 20 March-20 April 2027
Students work individually and in groups on course literature and their reflection papers. Mentoring sessions.

* Workshop II, 21-24 April 2027
Programme includes: 1) reading groups, 2) lectures by course teachers and/or international keynotes on frameworks for researching collaboration, 3) workshop on collective creativity, innovation and technologies of knowledge, 3) writing workshop, 4) science dissemination seminar.

* 25 April-14 May 2027
Students work on reflection paper, which must be handed in no later than 14 May.

Learning outcomes
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 analyze case studies from past and present.
• Ability to theorize collaborative frameworks.
• Ability to reflect on the significance, potentials ad potential failures of collaborative frameworks.
• Writing skills
• Skills in science dissemination.

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
This course is relevant for anyone who is interested in questions of collaboration in relation to architecture, cities and landscapes. We welcome PhD students from a range of fields, including landscape architecture, architecture, urbanism, urban planning, heritage studies, geography, cultural studies, urban and architectural history, organizational studies, sociology, ethnography and related fields. This includes PhD students for whom issues about collaboration have not been a main concern of their research until now. Practitioners or master students are also welcome to register if interested.

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 and architectural history, organizational studies, sociology, ethnography and related fields.

Teaching and Learning Methods
The course is structured mainly with dialogical workshops and shared learning tailored to the needs of the group of participants and maintains a strong focus on individual development, e.g. by offering individual mentoring conversations to all participants. After the course, each participant will write up and submit an individual reflection paper. This paper will document and reflect on what each course participant 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.

Type of Assessment
Approval of reflection paper.

Literature
To be defined by the course participants and the international guest lectures. Since it will be an interdisciplinary group of participants and course teachers from IGN and IND, we will ask every participant to send us one academic text that has inspired them. This will be collated into a compendium which will be our course literature (available digitally and can be bought as a physical version).

Course coordinator
Professors Henriette Steiner and Svava Riesto, IGN

Guest Lecturers
* Torsten Lange > Professor, Lucerne School of Architecture and Science, Lucerne University of Applied Art, will contribute a lecture and mentoring sessions.
* Bent Flyvbjerg > the Villum Kann Rasmussen Professor and Chair in Major Program Management, IT University of Copenhagen and Senior Research Fellow, St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford, will contribute a keynote lecture and facilitate discussion.
* Linda Hill > the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration, Harvard University, will contribute a keynote lecture and facilitate discussion.


Expected frequency
We would like to run the course consecutively for at least three years.

Course location
IGN, Auditorium Landskab, Rolighedsvej 23.


Requirements for signing up
Seats to PhD students from other Danish universities will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis and according to the applicable rules. Priority will be given to students from University of Copenhagen’s Faculty of SCIENCE as well as PhD students who work with methods from the above-mentioned research fields.

Applications from other participants will be considered after the deadline for registration.




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.

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