Architecture PhD | Built environment PhD

Dr Emmanuel Aboagye-Nimo is a Senior Lecturer in the Built Environment Subject Area. His supervisory interests include multidisciplinary research projects that capture people’s experiences. His research and professional activities are focused on the fair treatment of people. He works collaboratively with academics, industry professionals and policymakers in the areas of workers’ safety and wellbeing, including mental health in the construction industry. Finally, he works on research focusing on addressing racial disparities. He was the chair for Race Ethnicity and Cultural Heritage in his previous work role which has further informed his current projects.   

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

Tilo Amhoff is interested in PhD proposals in the history of architecture and planning in the context of international modernisms, especially proposals that address the material practices of the production of architecture and its intellectual and manual labours, and interdisciplinary approaches that mobilise the knowledge and methods of the humanities.

Duncan's supervisory interests cover a range of Fine Art and practice-based research with the use of drawing being central to his concerns. He has a particular interest in non-representational and meditative approaches to drawing and theory to research aspects of phenomenology, lived experience and arts health/wellbeing related subjects.

I’m interested in supervising practice-based PhDs, particularly those that are interdisciplinary and combine aspects of architecture/urban studies/spatial practices with art and other disciplines and practices (and may have a socially engaged or participatory element), and which might explore themes of migration, heritage, and regeneration.

Current PhD Students: 

Ghazaleh Fakhrabadi: Exploring feminist spaces in Persian art and culture

Ilenia Atzori: From ruins to community heritage: The role of storytelling in building a collective memory

PhD Examinations: 

James O'Leary: Interface Architecture: Towards the transformation of Belfast's 'Peacewalls' through Situated Practice (Internal Examiner)

Katrin Bohn supervises and examines PhDs that broadly correspond to her design research in productive urban landscapes, focussing on urban agriculture and the urban food system. She welcomes proposals exploring issues of scale, diversity, temporality and the everyday within the above named subject area. Katrin is associated to the four PGR programmes Architecture & Design, Built Environment, Ecology and History of Art & Design.

Currently, Katrin is the academic advisor in the School for our Visiting Researcher Dr. Dong Chu from the College of Design and Arts of Harbin University of Commerce, China.

Luis Diaz supervises and examines at PhD level and is available for supervision on topics related to housing, spatial form, movement and promenades in architectural and urban space, and architectural semiotics and structuralism. Topics can span the range of scales from interior space to architecture and urban landscapes. Diaz is currently supervising a PhD on the historical and contemporary use of the figure ground in urban design and another (at the Oslo School of Architecture) on the role of community engagement in listed brutalist housing estates. Current research areas focus on movement and circulation patterns in housing estates, post-war social and council housing, and everyday experiences of housing.

I welcome expressions of interest for supervisory PhD support for both theoretical and practice-based PhDs in the field of architecture, urbanism, everyday space and culture, touching on themes such as urban, peri-urban and rural cultures and change, fragilities in a global and local context, identities and territories, everyday spatial practices and tactics, societal change (such as, diversification and ageing), spatial ethnography and civic space. I am particularly interested in PhDs that explore multi-scalar dependencies, such as how overriding socio-economic, political, environmental and cultural forces and shifts impact and manifest themselves in the everyday lived realities, and vice versa. I encourage inter- trans- or cross-disciplinary approaches, as well as social engagement projects. My own research currently combines close-up, in-depth spatial, ethnographic readings and cartographies of everyday spatial tactics and lived space (urban, institutional and domestic) to dissect how overriding changes may manifest themselves in close-up, personal scenarios and how architecture and urban practice could harness knowledge gained in this field to offer creative, alternative approaches to mitigate emergent changes and to give capacity to nurture the human and civic dimension in our environments. 

Elisa welcomes PhD proposals that critically investigate new possible physical, temporal and relational qualities for the spaces we inhabit.

Dr Lynch is interested in supervising both theoretical and practice-based PhDs that challenge traditional modes of architectural representation. Lynch's own research interests focus on experiential time and investigate the temporal and spatial complexities of drawing architecture.

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: lived experiences of the anthropocene; urban place-attachment across generations; sequential art in architectural practice; urban seaside gentrification; the datafication of cycling; precarious mobile employment in the ‘smart city’' and generation and mobility futures.

I have supervised three PhDs to successful completion in:

• Life Cycle Assessment of Double-Skin Facades for refurbishment of office buildings in temperate climates
• Integrated Façade Systems for highly- to fully-glazed office buildings in hot and arid climates
• The judgement process in architectural design competitions as a deliberative communicative practice

I have three more PhD students at different stages of their studies working on:

• Managing sustainability through architectural design decision processes: Underpinning influences of human values on design problem framing
• Future-proof cultural heritage: A UK perspective
• An integrated approach to Value Management (VM), Risk Management (RM) and Environmental Management (EM) in construction projects

I am interested in taking on new PhD students in following areas:

• IoT (BIM, aerial/UAV scan, point cloud scan to BIM) for Facilities Management, Urban Regeneration / Restoration and Cultural Heritage Preservation
• Design Research and Design Theory
• 3D printing and additive manufacturing for post-disaster fast recovery/relief
• Off-site Manufacture for constrcution, Prefabrication, MMC
• (Mass) customisation, presonalisation, modularisation, standardisation, industrialised building systems, and automation in the AEC industry
• Building kinetic, double-skin and integrated facade systems (energy, lighting, indoor comfort, carbon footprint, environmental impact, technology and design)

My supervisory interests range across the disciplines of architecture, urban design and cultural geography, more specifically my interests include representations of architectural mobilities, histories, geographies and literatures of urban infrastructures, experiences of city spaces, urban cultural heritage.

Current supervision includes the following:

• Jonathan Moses 'The Politics of the British Public House - Architecture, Authenticity and Everyday Enchantment' (TECHNE AHRC funded, advisor with supervision by Prof Phillip Crang and Prof David Gilbert, RHUL)
• Alex Fitch 'Representations of Architectural Interactions in Sequential Art' (Design Star AHRC funded, lead supervisor with Dr Lesley Murray UoB and Dr David Brauner Reading University)
• Tess Pinto 'The Politics of Conservation: How the GLC shaped London, 1965-86' (TECHNE AHRC funded, advisor with supervision by Prof David Gilbert and Dr Oli Mould, RHUL
• Yue (Joy) Xin  'The role of the observer as intermediary between the planned city and the lived city' lead supervisor with Dr Tilo Amhoff
• Juan Carlos Garces de Vivo 'Waterfront Regeneration as Strategy: Barranquilla, Colombia' supervisor

Sarah Stevens supervisory interests sit within the exploration of architectural experience, ambiguity, uncertainty and temporality within architecture, with a particular focus on drawing, responsive architectures and facades. 

Current Supervision

Terry Meade, University of Brighton. Working title: Drawing Out Occupation: a study of how drawing may be used to reveal and clarify spatial complexities in a conflict zone.

Examinations 

PhD Examination, Francesco Pomponi, University of Brighton. Title: Operational performance and life cycle assessment of double skin façades for office refurbishments in the UK 

PhD Examination, Yahya Ibraheem, University of Brighton. Title: Integrated Facade Systems for highly- to fully-glazed office buildings in hot and arid climates  

PhD Examination, Sabrina Barbosa, University of Brighton. Title: Thermal performance of naturally ventilated office buildings with double skin façade under Brazilian climate conditions 

I am interested in supporting doctoral research that addresses how design disciplines work within and for complex systemic contexts, especially those that raise challenging questions regarding ethics, the role of emerging technologies, place, or the status of professional and scientific knowledge. I am especially interested in approaches that relate design to systems thinking and cybernetics, whether in relation to current practices such as systemic design or through historical or theoretical studies. I have experience with creative, theoretical, and historical research and have examined doctoral research internationally.

Andre Viljoen welcomes expression of interest for supervisory support from individuals interested in architecture and urban design, with a particular focus on sustainable design, urban agriculture and alternative architectural practices including engagement processes.  His inaugural lecture as Professor of Architecture provides an overview of his personal research. 

He has acted as a Ph.D. supervisor at the University of Brighton and Cambridge and as an examiner at the Universities of Sheffield, Oxford Brookes, and Brighton.

Doctoral Post-Graduate Research supervision:

Ongoing since 2017 - Ph.D. Co-Supervisor: University of Brighton Candidate funded under the South Coast Doctoral Training Partnership consortium (Global Economies and Business Innovation).  Joseph Palmer, Topic the use of Innovative Technologies in participatory planning.

Ongoing since 2015 - Ph.D. Lead Supervisor: University of Brighton Candidate (part-time), Magda Rich, Topic Therapeutic Horticulture in the city.

Ongoing since 2013) - Ph.D. Lead Supervisor (appointed 2017): University of Brighton Candidate (part-time), Gabriel Wulff, Topic Berlin Urban Agriculture, inputs and output.

Completed:                   

2009-14, Ph.D. Lead Supervisor: University of Brighton Candidate Mikey Tomkins, Topic Community Food Gardens.

2008- 12, Ph.D. Supporting Supervisor: University of Cambridge Candidate Gillian Denny, Topic Embodied greenhouse gas emissions and urban agriculture.

My research interests lie in the history of Town Planning, particularly the impetus for establishment of the Garden City movement, National Parks, the emergence of community engagement in the planning of places.  Other interests are the theoretical and political influences on the planning process, including regional government (and its demise).  The historical development of urban areas, their design; history of architecture and urban form.