PhD in Architecture, UK | PhD programmes in architecture and built environment

For over 35 years, the University of Brighton has brought innovation and impact through its research in architecture, built environment, construction technology, architectural humanities and interior architecture.

At Brighton, a real-world approach blends with rigorous scholarly practice and the professional underpinning of industry-experienced staff. Our Research Excellence Framework (REF2021) submissions across architecture, design, engineering and construction have demonstrated the world-leading and internationally significant work of expert staff working in architecture, urban design, sustainable practices and architectural history and theory as well as showcasing long-term impactful projects in sustainable architecture and urban agriculture.

The city itself has a unique architectural history. Brighton and Hove has witnessed constant debate, experimentation, pressures and challenges to its spaces. With the ever-growing City of London only a short distance away by train, your student life will be spent in an environment that has been designed, built and grown between a busy tourist seafront and the South Downs National Park, with inspiration along every street.

We are always open to approaches for postgraduate research study with our expert supervisors. Consider the supervision we offer and where your inspiration, vision and experience can contribute meaningfully to the research environment. The PhD programme area welcomes motivated individuals with a passion to explore projects in depth whether through applied, practice methods or theoretical approaches. The department includes staff and research students from the UK and overseas with opportunities to unite with fellow thinkers across the academic community.

Our aim during your period of study will be to develop your skills and knowledge so that you not only produce original research that advances academic understanding but also have the training and support required to take your learning forward into an exciting career.

CONTACT AN EXPERT IN THIS FIELD

Successful applicants have invariably had support with their application from one of our academics. We suggest you approach a suitable academic staff member with relevant research interests before progressing with your application.

Overview of our PhD programmes in Architecture and Built Environment

The University of Brighton hosts a diverse, multidisciplinary community of researchers across architecture and urban studies, research into the built environment, town planning, spatial design and architectural history and theory including cultural interactions with designed space.

Your postgraduate research will benefit from an environment of close collaboration, through both the School of Architecture, Technology and Engineering (ATE) and our Research Excellence Groups (REGs), especially the Built Environment, Architecture and Construction (BEACON) REG. There are ample opportunities for cross-disciplinary working with engineering, a wide range of design interests and disciplines, and computing, including Artificial Intelligence, Digital Twinning, Internet of Things (IoT), BIM, and eXtended Reality (XR) across architecture, the built environment and construction. Architecture PhD students have also successfully submitted PhD theses exploring creative and experimental practice and architectural and spatial histories.

From investigating the energy efficiency and performance of buildings, to examining the interrelationships between people, natural resources and the built environment, sustainable urban living to architectural humanities, our staff and PhD students are at the leading edge of empirical and theoretical research into architecture, building design and construction and the shaping and interaction with space. We are also working to understand the shifting nature of education to adapt to an ever-changing industry. Your research might engage spatial approaches to contemporary concerns engaging within fields from architectural psychology and wellbeing, to social concerns with a focus on housing, sustainable low-impact design, design methods and ethics, to urban agricultural and ecological urbanism, through creative and critical practice.

We welcome PhD proposals that have real-world application, as much of our research is in fields of practical impact. Data generated by researchers is being used, for example, to enhance the design of double-skin facades on buildings in order to improve their thermal performance, and to assess the impact of construction methods upon the provision of climate resilient affordable housing in Nigeria and Uganda, while the University of Brighton's Waste House continues to provide a living laboratory of sustainable architectural and building research.

Our Architecture PhD and Built Environment PhD students have gone on to a variety of different roles following the successful completion of their research. These include academic posts as lecturers and postdoctoral research assistants at Brighton and elsewhere, plus research roles in, for example, the construction industry. Many have returned to ongoing architectural practice or gone on to positions in government or industry, for example as senior consultants for facilities management contractors and as directors of construction companies.

You may wish to consider the Architectural Research MRes as an introduction to research in aspects of these disciplines, blending a taught element with a substantial research project.

Details of our doctoral research degrees in architecture and built environment

Research supervisors for your PhD research programme

You will benefit from research supervision comprising two or maximum three members of academic staff. Depending on your research specialism one of those supervisors may be from another school, another research institution, or an external partner.

You will identify your potential supervisor from the early stages of application and they will usually then support you throughout your programme of study, helping you carry out your research interests, guiding your learning of rigorous research methods and preparing you for the next stage of your career.

Supervisors often have national and international profiles, are active in shaping policies, legislations and guidance through professional and legislative bodies (e.g. QAA, CIAT, CIOB), and engage with professional bodies and industry-led research networks.

Our wide-reaching specialisms include:

Architectural design
Housing, community, people and planning
Project management
Sustainability of the built environment
Sustainable architecture and construction
Designing sustainable urban living
Adaptive re-use
Interior architecture and urban planning
Architectural humanities, theory, and ethics
Design methods, processes and ethics
Architectural psychology and wellbeing
Education in architecture and the built environment
Practice-based architecture
Urban agriculture
Landscape and urbanism
Advanced technologies in the built environment, architecture and construction
Construction management
Energy efficiency and building performance
Environmental impact of buildings and construction
AI, Digital Twinning, Internet of Things (IoT), BIM, and eXtended Reality (XR)
Circular economy in architecture, the built environment and construction
Off-site manufacturing and modern methods of construction (MMC)

If you are hoping to submit an application, you should consider the staff listed below and, by way of an approach to them for advice and support, create a short draft research proposal identifying your suitability for supervision from that person's research specialism.

Research training and support

The independent research programme is balanced and enhanced with a range of support from your supervisors and the extended academic community. Whatever the focus of your PhD project, you will be able to draw on research approaches from a variety of related fields, including civil engineering, environmental science, sustainable design and human geography. You can develop research plans and apply methods involving both quantitative and qualitative data, supported by appropriate research methods training.

You and your fellow postgraduate researchers will have the opportunity to attend and present at research seminar sessions with guests from professional and academic spheres across architecture and the built environment. The PhD programme will give you the opportunity to build research expertise as well as developing transferable skills essential for employment and practice within architecture and its related fields.

As a member of the Brighton Doctoral College, you will benefit from regular opportunities on a training programme designed to support postgraduate researchers at all stages of the PhD and help them achieve their career goals. Attendance at appropriate workshops within this programme is encouraged, as is contribution to the various seminar series hosted by the school and the annual Postgraduate Research Festival. Academic and technical staff also provide more subject-specific training.

Postgraduate degree resources for architecture graduate students

We pride ourselves on conducting research with impact that serves society, policy, and industry. PhD candidates often work with local communities, regional authorities, and industry partners on real-world challenges. This approach aligns with Brighton’s civic mission and ensures research goes beyond theory into meaningful application. The University of Brighton has a reputation for architecture and built-environment work that is deeply applied, interdisciplinary, socially conscious and digitally forward-thinking, offering a rich blend of academic rigour and real-world impact, particularly suited for candidates interested in sustainability, digital innovation, inclusivity and public engagement.

You will benefit from access to international research resources, including a contemporary range of electronic resources via the university’s Online Library, as well as the physical book and journal collections housed within campus libraries. The library services are connected to national and international collections and students also have the option of inter-library loans.

The School of Architecture, Technology and Engineering

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

Students are encouraged to join one of the university's research groups and centres, some of which focus on the school's specialisms and some which draw on talented researchers from across the wider university. Postgraduate students working on architecture, architectural design, interior architecture built environment topics have been integrated into one or more of our Centres of Research and Enterprise Excellence (COREs) or Research Excellence Groups (REGs), including:

Through these, postgraduate doctoral 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.

Architect's drawing of Moulsecoomb Campus bridge

Original architect's drawing (Hassell Architects) of the bridge connecting two sides of the Moulsecoomb Campus, where the school is based.

Supervisors and academic contacts

We strongly recommend that you apply with the support of one of our academics. By establishing your supervisor from the early stages of application, you will be supported through the application process and can make the best start to your programme of study.

You should consider the staff listed below and create a short draft research proposal identifying your suitability for supervision from that person's research specialism and your place in the wider context of the department's research ambitions. Their contact details are available on their full profile.

Our primary staff supervising in the discipline are listed. For further information on university supervisory staff, including cross-disciplinary options, please visit research staff on our research website.

Dr Mahmood Alam

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

Dr Tilo Amhoff

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.

Dr Katy Beinart

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

Current PhD Students:

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

Antony Dixon: Here is where we meet (Body, Matter and Things): A sensory investigation, through co-creative practice, of the misplaced and found.

Jessica Melville-Brown: Co-designing the future: An exploration into the development of new methods for creative engagement, examining the influence of gender roles, socio-economic and ethno-cultural factors in the co-design process with young people.

PhD Examinations:

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

Jina Lee: Drawing ‘New Maps’: Critical Cartography and Ethnographical Enquiry Through Drawing Practice (External Examinar)

M Phil examinations:

Lida Driva: The Operation of the Hidden. Towards an understanding of architectural and urban space: the case of Omonia Square (External Examiner)

Luis Diaz

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 supervised a PhD completion on the historical and contemporary use of the figure ground in urban design and another completion (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.

Anuschka Kutz

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.

Dr Elisa Lega

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

Dr Sam Lynch

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.

Prof 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: lived experiences of the anthropocene; urban place-attachment across generations; sequential art in architectural practice; urban pocket parks; generation and automobility futures; and the wellbeing of refugee children.

Dr Poorang Piroozfar

I have supervised seven PhDs to successful completion in:

Operational performance and life cycle assessment of double skin façades for office refurbishments in the UK
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
Urban Management in Post-Conflict Settings: The Case of Baghdad, Iraq
Managing sustainability through architectural design decision processes: influences of values and frames
Critical success factors for integration of value, financial risk, and environmental management systems in medium-sized design and build projects
A future-proof cultural heritage: Responsible, safe, and effective retrofit measures for traditional listed dwellings

I have two more PhD students at different stages of their studies working on smart cities.

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

Digitality in architecture, the built environment, and construction
Smart(ness) at building, community, city and regional levels
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 construction, Prefabrication, MMC
(Mass) customisation, personalisation, 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)

Dr Sarah Stevens

Sarah Stevens supervisory interests sit within the exploration of relational, time sensitive and dynamic design.

Current Supervision

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

Joy Xin, working title: Observing London and Beijing via Mrs Dalloway and Rickshaw Boy.' An exploration of the potential of novels for revealing histories of movement and interaction within urban analysis.

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

Dr Ben Sweeting

I am interested in supporting doctoral research that addresses how design disciplines work within complex systemic contexts. I have experience with creative, theoretical, and historical research and have examined doctoral research internationally.

Prof Andre Viljoen

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 University College London (The Bartlett), University of Sheffield, Oxford Brookes University, and Brighton.

Doctoral Post-Graduate Research supervision:

2015-23 (Part Time), Ph.D. Lead Supervisor: University of Brighton Candidate, Magda Rich, Topic The Healing City: Adaptation of Care farming principles in dense urban areas.

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.

Dr Helen Walker

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.

Making an application

Once you have prepared a first-rate application you can apply to the University of Brighton through our online application portal. When you do, you will require a research proposal, references, a personal statement and a record of your education.

You will be asked whether you have discussed your research proposal and your suitability for doctoral study with a member of the University of Brighton staff. We strongly recommend that all applications are made with the collaboration of at least one potential supervisor. Approaches to potential supervisors can be made directly through the details available online. If you are unsure, please do contact the Doctoral College for advice.

Please visit our How to apply for a PhD page for detailed information.

Fees and funding

Funding

Undertaking research study will require university fees as well as support for your research activities and plans for subsistence during full or part-time study.

Funding sources include self-funding, funding by an employer or industrial partners; there are competitive funding opportunities available in most disciplines through, for example, our own university studentships or national (UK) research councils. International students may have options from either their home-based research funding organisations or may be eligible for some UK funds.

Learn more about the funding opportunities available to you.

Tuition fees academic year 2024–25

Standard fees are listed below, but may vary depending on subject area. Some subject areas may charge bench fees/consumables; this will be decided as part of any offer made. Fees for UK and international/EU students on full-time and part-time courses are likely to incur a small inflation rise each year of a research programme.

MPhil/PhD
	Full-time	Part-time
UK	£4,786	£2,393
International (including EU)	£15,900	N/A
International students registered in the School of Humanities and Social Science or in the School of Business and Law	£14,500	N/A

PhD by Publication
Full-time	Part-time
N/A	£2,393

Contact Brighton Doctoral College

To contact the Doctoral College at the University of Brighton we request an email in the first instance. Please visit our contact the Brighton Doctoral College page.

For supervisory contact, please see individual profile pages.