The SMUS (Post)Doctoral Programme (2025-2029), promotes doctoral and post-doctoral research revolving around urban sustainability topics and their underlying wicked urban problems (WUP). Next to the ongoing goal of strengthening research competencies among the teaching and research staff at partner universities, SMUS encourages the incorporation of a transdisciplinary, spatial, and practice-led research lens. By developing methodological research skills relative to this threefold approach, new light can be shed on the paradoxical nature of WUP. This in turn provides the basis for: (a) a greater understanding of WUP across the three world regions allowing for better comparison; (b) deriving common patterns and practices to tackle WUP; and (c) understanding and rendering operative contextual knowledge.
This action also includes a science-policy collaborative research initiative between Technische Universität Berlin and APRI, the African Policy Research Institute (a Berlin-based, independent, and non-partisan African think tank). In 2025, post-doctoral researchers from African-based SMUS network partner universities will be hosted at these institutions to produce policy briefs related to Urban Africa.
Action 3 – Evaluate (2020 -2024)
In Phase I (2020-2024), Action 3 revolved around the reflection on methods and the development of methodological skills, aiming at establishing sustainable research connections. Network members were thus encouraged to write doctoral dissertations and post-doctoral research grant proposals. To give way to a long-term sustainable basis for autonomous investigation, the central goal was advancing competencies in the teaching and research staff at partner universities.
Researchers at different academic career stages examined an array of social challenges traversing different topics (heritage, water management, children’s mobility, planning systems, among others) unfolding in the various world regions. In so doing, doctoral and postdoctoral researchers alike turned methodological skills into practice, by developing and mapping frameworks for cross-cultural and socioeconomic perspectives. In addition, spatial research methods and approaches were used and reflected upon. Since the threefold procedure – PhD Training Programme, PhD and Post-Doc Scholarships – was adequate, it is continued in Phase II.
Action Speaker for Action 3
Prof. Dr. Angela Million
Action Speaker & Scientific Coordinator
Dr. Ignacio Castillo Ulloa
Action 3 Outputs
