Built environment PhD

As a Built environment PhD student at the University of Brighton, you will

• be able to draw on research approaches from a variety of related fields, including civil engineering, environmental science, and human geography. You can develop research plans and apply methods involving both quantitative and qualitative data, supported by appropriate research methods training. benefit from a supervisory team comprising two to three members of academic staff. Depending on your research specialism you may also have an additional external supervisor from another School, another research institution, or industry.
• be provided with desk space and access to a desktop PC, either in one of the postgraduate offices on the 6^th floor of the award-winning Cockcroft Building, or within the adjacent Heavy Engineering Block. You will additionally benefit from access to a range of electronic resources via the University’s Online Library, as well as to the physical book and journal collections housed within the Aldrich Library and other campus libraries.
• have access to state-of-the-art equipment, including suites of monitors and data loggers for the measurement of air permeability, irradiance, thermal performance and air quality within buildings and a range of facilities on the Moulsecoomb site, including a water efficiency laboratory, specialist microbial and water quality laboratories, hydraulic flumes, an experimental river basin, geochemical and geotechnical laboratories, microscopy laboratories (optical and scanning electron microscopes), and a concrete laboratory, as well as a large array of field equipment. All of these facilities are supported by a team of dedicated laboratory and workshop technicians.

As a Built environment PhD student, you will be an integral part of the School of Environment and Technology and take an active role in a range of intellectual and social activities within the school.

All postgraduate students working on built environment topics are integrated into one or more of our Research Centres or Research Groups as well as the Construction Engineering and Management Research and Enterprise Group.

Students have support and alignment across specialists in architecture, construction, and social sciences, bringing opportunities to present ‘work in progress’ to specialists and non-specialists and to reach a broad network of researchers.

The Brighton Doctoral College offer a training programme for postgraduate researchers, covering research methods and transferable (including employability) skills. Attendance at appropriate modules within this programme is encouraged, as is contribution to the School’s fortnightly seminar series. Academic and technical staff also provide more subject-specific training.

Researchers within the School of Environment and Technology are engaged in work across a wide range of topic areas, and thus your PhD research could pursue interests in almost any area of built environment. 

Our particular areas of specialism currently include:

• Advanced technologies in the built environment, architecture and construction
• Construction management
• Education in the built environment
• Energy efficiency and building performance
• Environmental impact of buildings and construction
• Housing, community, people and planning
• Project management
• Sustainability of the built environment

While considering supervision from the University of Brighton, you may like to explore the following PGR programme area, too:

Design PhD | Architecture PhD

Dr Mahmood Alam

I am intersted in supervising postgraduate research students in the following areas: Vacuum Insulation Panels; Building Performance Evaluation; Energy Efficiency in Built Environment; Building retrofit

Dr Lesley Murray

I am interested in supervising doctoral students on a range of topics including transport and mobilities, urban sociology, visual sociology and gender and generation. In addition, I welcome proposals from students seeking to adopt creative and inventive methodologies and methods. I am currently supervising projects on: non-flying holidays; lived experiences of the anthropocene; urban place-attachment across generations; sequential art in architectural practice; urban seaside gentrification; the datafication of cycling; and precarious mobile employment in the ‘smart city’.

For further supervisory staff including cross-disciplinary options, please visit research staff on our research website.