Course program 2025

Language

English

Coodinator(s)

Dr. Emanuele Naboni (Adjunct Professor at the Royal Danish Academy, Contracted Professor at University of South Wales (Sydney), UC Berkeley, Norman Foster Academy, School of Sustainability).

Course description 

This course, taught in 12 universities in different countries and taught to more than 300 PhD students, aims to support Ph.D. students wishing to conduct design research and enter the academic world. The objectives of the course are four: 

1) to understand the academic world coordinates 
2) to grant breadth, fostering the development of a Ph.D. thesis Structure and other academic essays
3) to give depth to research work by converging on the development of a solid methodology and customized Research Methods (primarily for Architecture and Design but applicable to Scientific Disciplines) 
4) to address all the aspects of the Management of a Thesis and relations to stakeholders

From the introduction to conclusions, producing a Thesis Structure is a further challenge: the course, uniquely based on participants' thesis work, proposes a step-by-step guide to devising a Structure that strengths Parts and Chapters organization and connections. Either Ph.D. researchers have just started their Ph.D. or are closing it; each participant will grasp the essential, iterative process by which research questions generate Knowledge.

Critical to the Process is the vast range of Research Methods suitable for the diverse array of topics germane to Design Research (e.g. research by Design, Qualitative Research design, Correlational, Experimental, Simulation, Case Studies). When logical, participants will seek ways to marshal the benefits of two or more Research Methods applied to their investigations to build a solid Methodology. 

Weaved with Structure and Methods is the “Thesis Management.” Here, a high emphasis is placed on the "adventure" of being a research student. How to get started, get through revisions, face deadlines, and regulate the workload is addressed. The full potential of working with supervisors, the varied stakeholders (comprising industrial Ph.Ds), academic peers, and final examiners is treated. The topic of dissemination along and after the Ph.D. is also debated.

The course offers a cohesive approach that will help PhD students succeed in their academic path. 

Dates

3rd-7th of February

Calendar:

Monday

9 AM to 12 PM: Introduction to the academic world, key academic terms, structuring the thesis and its components, and focus on the Introduction and Research Goals.

Afternoon: Individual work
 

Tuesday

9 AM to 12 PM: Detailed examination of your thesis' core and synthesis. Principles of good academic writing and a guide to scientific production during the PhD.

Afternoon: Individual work

Wednesday

9 AM to 12 PM: Methodology - emphasizing the development of original research methods.

Afternoon: Individual work

Thursday

9 AM to 12 PM: Writing, viva, and attributes of a successful thesis. Other academic activities alongside the PhD. Time and energy management. Managing relationships with thesis stakeholders.

Afternoon: Individual work
 

Friday

9 AM to 12 PM: Presentation and final debates on PhD structure and Table of Contents.

Min. and max participants

Min 6 max 12 or 14

ECTS

4

Application deadline

1st of November 2024

Language

English

Coordinator

Dag Petersson

Course description

Through this course, students obtain insights in the fundamentals of academic research practices. Particular focus is on crafting a proper academic object, formulating a good problem statement, structuring one’s data collection, and getting a first grasp on method, theory and analysis. This introduction is primarily for PhD-students from the art, architecture, and design schools, aiming particularly at those who are in the early phases of their projects Teaching is based on the participants’ individual project descriptions. No previous experience with academic production is expected. The goal is to critically identify each project’s inherent academic requirements and preferred strategy, and to help students meet the established academic criteria and standards from early on.

Participants should upload/submit their full PhD project description and project plan ahead.

Dates

13th-17th of January 2025

Venue

Holmen

ECTS 

3 

Application deadline

20th of December 2024

Language

English (or Danish if only Danish speaking students) 

Coodinator

Anders Hermund

Other lecturers

Henrik Oxvig and Jacob Bang + invited key note lecturers

Course description 

The course introduces artificial intelligence in research as a potential player in the creative process. We look at A.I. text generation tools and Machine Learning where A.I. text-to-image generation is used as a possible inspiration to get started with studies of moods, spatiality and to support a reflection on the architectural vision and narratives in architecture projects. A research project in Tanzania using remote sensing and machine learning artificial intelligence will also be introduced as a case study.

We will combine philosophical, artistic, and scientific approaches in order to discuss the potentials and the potential dangers by A.I. as an instrument or agent in our daily work with art and research, and the big questions of modern society. During the course we will have reflections and discussions based on presentations from the lecturers and a reader comprising texts from Plato, Heidegger, Deleuze to modern tech philosophers like Kevin Kelly and Jaron Lanier.  We will also hands-on introduce and use A.I. tools during the course to produce material for discussion in relation to research, art, and scientific work in the individual PhD projects.

Dates

Course will be one week, with presentations Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. 

17-02-2024 - 21-02-2025

Venue

Royal Danish Academy

ECTS

3

Application deadline

17th of December 2024

Language, form and ECTS

English/Danish. Lectures, exercises, discussions, 1 ECTS

Course facilitators

Margrethe “Gæk” Bredahl – Librarian – mbre@kglakademi.dk
Søren Peter Mørch – Librarian – smor@kglakademi.dk
Silja Attrup – Librarian – satt@kglakademi.dk

Dates
 

11th and 12th of March 2025 - both days from 9:00 to 15.00 with an one-hour lunch break.

Application deadline
 

10th of January 2025

Course description
 

This course is specifically aimed at PhD students in the beginning of their writing process. The course will consist of a mix of lectures, discussions, and exercises. We encourage you to share your knowledge and experiences during the course.

Part 1: Information search in specialized databases and the open web. The first part of this course will enable you to conduct advanced academic information searches. We will explore the search process from defining a strategy to evaluating and documenting your search results. You will learn how to carry out comprehensive literature searches based on your own research assignment. We will guide you through the various information seeking steps from selecting relevant search strategies and techniques to evaluating your search results.

• Evaluate databases and other information resources
• Set up search strategies and use various search techniques
• Identify relevant types of information resources

Part 2: Reference management, citations, and bibliography. The second part of the course will teach you how to use a reference management tool to keep track of the literature and other sources you need for your research and how to use the tools to manage and overlook your research process.

• Introduction to Zotero – please install one before the course : zotero.org
• How to autogenerate citations and bibliography entries in various styles as part of your search- and writing process

Part 3: Personal Knowledge Management. We introduce the student to various methods and tools to organize all the information and data types they deal with within their three years of study.

Part 4: Publishing and sharing your research. This third part of the course will introduce you to the publishing workflow, Open Access, the PURE portal, and other aspects of the research cycle.

• Open Access and copyright-negotiation with publishers
• How to register your research and CV in our PURE research portal
• Introduction to the publication workflow and platforms for Academic exposure and findability such as ORCID

Language

English

Coordinators

Isak Worre Foged & Phil Ayres 

Other lecturers

TBA

Course description

Materials are an embedded part of design thinking, design experiments and design making, both in academia and industry. They also form a central leverage point in the transition to a sustainable society, and a core aspect of how we develop experiential phenomena for our design targets.

We engage with materials constantly, but how do we study materials, material processes and material representations in design led research?

This course focuses on illustrating and debating research strategies and methods for material studies in architecture and design. This implicates the forming of a dual research platform of both quantitative and qualitative investigations that enable new insights across the design scales.

The course is structured around 2 activities: An initiating 2-Day seminar, where invited speakers and participating PhD students will present and discuss research approaches. This is followed by a 2-Day workshop on how to advance the methodological approaches of the student specific projects.

Dates

Seminar: 19th-20th of March

Workshop: 9th-10th of April

Venue

Holmen

ECTS

3

Application deadline

1 February 2025

Language

English

Coodinator

Sissel Olander

Other lecturers

TBA

Course description

The choice of PhD research methodology or approach(es) largely influences the results and arguments one is able to make. Within design research, during the last decades research-through-design (Frayling 1993) or more broadly practice-based approaches have been emphasized and richly elaborated. The course has a special focus on research programs and how practices of making – often described and considered as experiments – play a core role in the

development of new knowledge. During this PhD course we will give an overview of these different developments and characteristics of research-through-design - especially in a Scandinavian perspective. The course is comprised of a two-day Symposium followed by a later two/three-day Seminar. The Symposium includes: Lecturers introducing and engaging in dialogue about different perspectives on and characteristics of research-through-design – with special focus on ‘research programs’ and experiments; smaller reflective exercises and a hands-on workshop / meta-experiment to assist the participating PhD scholars in elaborating their own approach and position in relation to parts of the course literature. The later Seminar includes: group analysis, discussion and presentation – in a methodological perspective - of a collection of research-through-design PhD dissertations. Additionally, the participating Ph.d. scholars will present their own position in terms of research approach(es) and roles of the practical work, and will give and get verbal individual feedback from staff and one other student. Preparation prior to the Symposium and the Seminar will be rather substantial in terms of readings. A compendium of texts will be provided as well as examples of practice-based PhD dissertations. Each student is to read one of these dissertations intentionally matching the student’s research interests. Preparation for the Seminar also includes individually making a theoretically and practically grounded presentation of one’s own research methodology / approach(es) and giving feedback to one other student.

Dates

Symposium 26th and 27th of May

Seminar 14th and 15th of August

ECTS

5

Application deadline

26th of March

Sprog 

Dansk (engelsk hvis nødvendigt)

Ansvarlige

Arne Redsted Rasmussen & Morten Ryhl-Svendsen

Kursusbeskrivelse

Kurset er en introduktion til arbejdsgangen omkring skrivning og publicering af artikler til videnskabelige tidsskrifter. Deltagerne vil stifte kendskab til forskellige artikeltyper, peer-review systemet, og få præsenteret eksempler på videnskabelige publikationer.

Introduktion til den videnskabelige artikels enkeltdele gives ved klasseundervisning. Der vil indgå en stor andel af selvstudie og selvstændigt arbejde, herunder udarbejdelse af et manuskript til en artikel, efter eget emnevalg, til intern fremlæggelse og kritik på modulet. Dette vil kræve forberedelse på ca. 5 timer per undervisningstime.

• Pensum: Gastel, B. & Day, R.A.: “How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper” (9th Ed.), Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2022.

Datoer

D. 11., 18., 25. september og d. 2. og 9. oktober.

Lokalitet

Holmen

ECTS 

5

Tilmeldingsfrist

18. juli 2025

Language 

English

Coordinator

Gustavo Ribeiro, Associate Professor, IBBL, The Royal Danish Academy

Other lecturers

Matthew Gandy (to be confirmed). Professor of Cultural and Historical Geography, Cambridge University

Jonna Majgaard Krarup – Professor, IBBL, The Royal Danish Academy

Course description 

The challenges posed by the climate and biodiversity crises have given rise to an urgent need to rethink urban planning theory and practice. 

There has been an increasing focus in urban studies, notably in the last decade, on the need for addressing the challenge of human exceptionalism in urban theory and practice. As several authors have pointed out, efforts to reconceive and retheorize urban planning in more-than-human terms as well as concrete endeavours to implement more-than-human approaches in planning practice face challenges and dilemmas (Houston et al. 2018), which permeate ideological and discursive practices as wells as concrete planning frameworks - legislation, projects, planning platforms, processes, amongst others. 

In this course we will explore key theoretical and analytical work that engage in discussions of the inclusion of more-than-human perspectives in urban planning and how such perspectives may contribute to a reconfiguration of planning practice.

The course programme will consist of a masterclass (1 day) with an international expert/academic. We already have been in contact with Matthew Gandy concerning inviting him to lecture at the Royal Danish Academy and will invite him to contribute to deliver af master class. The remaining 4 days of the course will include lectures delivered by the course coordinator Gustavo Ribeiro (discussing the theme of the course in relation to key theoretical positions) as well as academic staff at IBBL doing research on the theme. 

Students will be asked to do extensive reading prior to the beginning of the course. They will also be asked to prepare a 10-15 min. presentation concerning a reflection on the theme of the course and its relevance for their PhD work.

Dates

20th- 24th of October 

Venue

Holmen

ECTS

3 

Application deadline

1st of August 

Language

English

Coordinators

Henrik Oxvig, Associate Professor, IBBL

Martin Søberg, Associate Professor, IBK

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

ECTS

3

Application deadline

6th of September 

Language

English

Coordinator

Kirsten Marie Raahauge

Other lecturers

Prof. Alison J Clarke, Vienna University of Applied Arts (master)

Associate prof. Masashi Kaijita

TBA: a researcher from Center for Interior Studies or Cluster for Inclusive Design

Course description

The course consists of three elements: 

A one-day seminar with small lectures and debates, where all the teachers are involved. 

A one-day study circle with presentations of texts by the students and discussions of themes and texts in plenum.

A one-day seminar with presentation of papers by the ph.d.-students, commented by Alison Clarke, and discussed by all the teachers, ending with a lecture by Alison Clarke

The making and shaping of the human environments are never value neutral. Shaping the life conditions for humans, design, architecture, and planning creates the material and spatial conditions under which humans re-reproduce values, norms, social relations and cultural contexts. To design something is to create the fertile grounds for human practices and activities; design both reflects and transforms its societal context. Either this relationship is overlooked, or it is simply presented as an a-priori positive relationship. Design and normativity are inseparable as are the positive and negative outcomes for humans within such frames. 

The course has three levels: First, it offers an operational framing of critical-creative theories and concepts from the humanities, social sciences, and critical design thinking. Secondly, these are illustrated on cases drawn from the research of the lecturers and reaches across from design studies over interior and domestic design to questions of critical disability studies. Thirdly, the course also requires participants to present their research projects within the framing of ‘design and normativity’; they will be given detailed feedback from the lecturers.

Dates

26.11.-28.11. 

Venue

Holmen

ECTS 

4 

Application deadline

26th of September

Sprog // Language

Danish/English

Ansvarlig // Coordinator

Jonna Majgaard Krarup 

Øvrige undervisere // Other lecturers

TBA

Kursusbeskrivelse // Course description 

Discussions on nature and landscape fill the professional and the public debate – many ask themselves how to reconnect with nature, how to reestablish nature’s own balance, they explore and argue for nature-based solutions, and eco system services etc. An over-arching question concerns the human- non-human relation and how it is translated and negotiated and represented.

Seen from a professional landscape architectural perspective this interest is, on the one hand, very gratifying. On the other hand, the fact that the increased interest is related to global warming, resource exhaustion and biodiversity loss is discouraging.

Many of the questions are asked by researchers coming from other disciplines – for example philosophy, sociology, law, and biology, but touch upon and have relevance for landscape architectural, spatial, and aesthetic and ethical aspects. 

The questions also offer the opportunity for the landscape architectural discipline to re-visit and possible to re-connect with its theoretical and methodological legacy, and to re-position itself in an even wider and/or better(?) disciplinary context and framework.

The course is structured in a colloquium format, where the participants' active participation with written contributions based on their own research topics and research questions, together with joint literature studies and presentations, both define the framework and content of the course.

Datoer // Dates

1st and 2nd of December 2025

Lokalitet (fysisk fremmøde/digitalt) // Venue (physical attendance/online)

Depending on the number of international participants the course can be given as an on-line course.

ECTS

3

Tilmeldingsfrist // Application deadline

1st of August 2025