Following completion of the SMUS PhD Training Programme (the SMUS Action 3 Step ONE), the eighteen participants prepared and applied for three-year scholarships to pursue their doctorates. In October 2025, an ad-hoc selection committee comprising members from partner universities granted nine scholarships. As of 1 July 2026, these nine SMUS doctoral candidates began their doctoral journeys at the Technische Universität Berlin, the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, the Technische Universität Dortmund, the Universität Freiburg and the University of Pretoria. This marked the official beginning of SMUS Action 3 Step TWO: PhD scholarships within the network.
Conducting doctoral-level academic research provides a unique opportunity to examine social and environmental changes unfolding in different world regions, some of which are connected to Wicked Urban Problems (WUP) to varying degrees. Drawing on the variety of methodological approaches to transdisciplinarity, spatial methods and practice-led research presented during the SMUS PhD Training Programme, the selected research proposals will shed new light on the paradoxical nature of WUP in cities such as Dar es Salaam, Bangkok, Semarang, Pretoria, Mexico City, Porto Alegre, Kolkata and Lilongwe. Subjects covered will include urban sprawl, waste management, waterfront development projects, floods, public spaces, microbial and multispecies entanglements, public transport and access to electricity.
The rich tapestry of critical insights emerging from these nine doctoral dissertations constitutes a valuable contribution to expanding the basis for: (a) a wider understanding of WUP across developing countries, thereby enabling comparison between them; (b) identifying common patterns and practices for dealing with WUP; and (c) developing and applying contextual knowledge based on personal, local, strategic and specialized disciplinary contributions through open transdisciplinarity.
Furthermore, academic career development for qualified university personnel, such as conducting doctoral research on WUP, will likely pave the way for practice-led research projects focusing on the organization of co-produced knowledge between research scientists, practitioners and other societal actors in complex, heterogeneous and dynamic domains, rather than being compartmentalized into specific disciplines and themes.
Further information on the nine doctoral candidates and their research can be found by following the link to their profiles here Action 3 – SMUS Doctoral Candidates