Doctoral Fellowship in Landscape and Urban Studies

Doctoral Fellowship in Landscape and Urban Studies

The Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies (LUS) at the ETH Zurich Department of Architecture invites applications for two doctoral fellowship positions. The fellowship will start on 1 October 2026
, with a 100% workload, based in Zurich, and is fixed‑term for three and a half years
.

Working across sociocultural, political‑economic, and theoretical contexts, the LUS Doctoral Program fosters critical discourse and encourages independent, innovative, and interdisciplinary approaches to the urgent spatial, socio‑ecological, and political challenges.

Participating Chairs at the LUS

The LUS Institute currently consists of seven chairs, each contributing uniquely to its diverse research landscape:

The LUS Institute investigates landscapes, territories, and settlements—and the human and more‑than‑human relations that shape them—across scales and geographies, from Switzerland and Europe to diverse contexts throughout the so‑called Global North and Global South.

Its research examines the spatial, environmental, political, (geo) historical, and more‑than‑human relations through which contemporary environments are produced, contested, and continually reshaped. The Institute engages with a broad set of interconnected themes that explore how these environments evolve. Core areas of inquiry include territorial and urban transformation; post‑industrial and resource‑affected territories; and the global‑local entanglements that drive ongoing urbanisation processes. These interests are complemented by research into more‑than‑human and multispecies spatialities, foregrounding ecological interdependencies within changing landscapes.

Research projects address topics such as designed ecologies, energy transitions, agroecology, hydrology, biodiversity and ecosystem processes, regenerative systems, and adaptive territorial infrastructures. Additional areas of focus include more‑than‑human landscapes, Indigenous territorialities, and socio‑ecological and socio‑economic transitions, and climate adaptation—together offering a comprehensive lens on the challenges and potentials of present and future development of landscapes, territories, and settlements.

The doctoral program adopts an inter‑ and transdisciplinary approach, integrating architecture, landscape architecture, urban and territorial design, planning, urban theory and history, as well as the social sciences. It welcomes a wide range of methodological approaches, spanning (geo) historical research into landscape and urban form, participatory and community‑engaged methods, qualitative and ethnographic inquiry, as well as cartographic, spatial, and mapping techniques.

• The doctoral program is conducted in English and currently has an enrolment of 15 participants. It encourages both individual research and collaborative engagement within the doctoral community, fostering a vibrant academic environment.
• It offers a variety of platforms for interaction and exchange, including the LUS methods seminar, institute‑wide colloquia, workshops, and doctoral reviews.
• Embedded in the dynamic doctoral environment of the Department of Architecture (D‑ARCH) at ETH Zurich, the LUS doctoral program maintains an active collaboration with the doctoral program at the Institute of History and Theory of Architecture (gta), ETH Zurich. This collaboration enhances interdisciplinary perspectives and expands research opportunities for participants.

While it is advantageous for proposed research to align with the individual and/or collective research agendas of the participating chairs at the LUS Institute, candidates are also encouraged to apply with independent research topics that resonate with the Institute’s broader areas of expertise and competencies.

We are seeking individuals with a background in:

• Architecture, landscape architecture, urban and territorial design and planning, and the social sciences, who have strong research or design experience and can benefit from the inter‑ and transdisciplinary engagements offered by the Institute.
• Provisional acceptance in the LUS Doctoral Programme is contingent upon successful completion—prior…