PhD/M.Phil Research

The PGR (Post-graduate Research) community at the WSA comprises around 70 research students – all at different stages in their M.Phil/PhD studies – exploring a wide variety of topics and questions relating to the built environment. This year has been an exceptionally challenging one, with COVID-19 limiting access to fieldwork settings, stakeholders, and respondents, as well as affecting individual researcher capacities for scholarship conducted in relative isolation at home. For some the pandemic meant moving home, involving rapid repatriation and time in quarantine.

PGR students have demonstrated tremendous innovation, reflexivity, and resilience; rescoping projects, adopting alternative methodologies, evolving new methods and tactics, as well as developing new skills for online communication and conferencing. PGR students engaged in teaching have also been at the forefront of exceptional efforts to support undergraduates, helping to shape much of the work that is exhibited on this website. We can also celebrate five PGR students that successfully defended their theses during the academic year, and those that are close to submitting this summer.

The selection of projects posted here represent individual works-in-progress, providing a taster of the research interests and activities in the School. You can find out more about the breadth and depth of the School’s PGR community, as well as read individual student profiles here: Research Student Profiles.

A special characteristic of the School’s PGR community is its diversity of cultural backgrounds and disciplinary identities. A multitude of personal and professional journeys have led students from around the world to make the WSA their home. These students are engaged in original research, generating new knowledge for international audiences, and setting up trajectories for impactful work that reaches beyond academia.

If you have a research proposal in mind and/or would like to explore the possibility of post-graduate studies, please explore our Postgraduate Research Degrees.

Dr Sam Clark, Director of Postgraduate Research