PhD Urban Studies

A majority of the world’s population is in cities and towns today, even as rapid transformations in social and economic lives have been observed across the board as settlements become increasingly interconnected. The progressive urbanization of the world’s population has multiple implications that range from the sociological to the ecological. South Asia is home to five of the ten largest megacities in the world, while smaller urban centres are growing faster. Even as these places are widely seen as the embodiment of aspiration, infrastructures are severely under stress and ecological crisis, manifesting in many instances through disasters, awaits the urban future. There is a clear need to research, reflect on, and contribute to informed policymaking on urban concerns.

The Ph.D. programme in Urban Studies, based at the School of Global Affairs, is geared to familiarize students with extensive knowledge of the foundations of the field and equip them with the tools to carry out independent and original research leading to a successful dissertation.

Objectives:

To develop knowledge of important paradigms in the field and the ability to classify and categorize related ideas
To frame concrete situations conceptually
To design and conduct independent, in-depth research on a specific aspect of the urban
To develop the ability to communicate ideas effectively, especially in writing
To become an ethical scholar and individual guided by principles of care and collaboration

Following are the broad research themes/areas that the programme intends to cover:

Urban History, Heritage
Urban Policy and Governance
Urban Politics and Social Movements
Gender, Sexuality and Identities
Urban Environment and Ecology
Economy and Livelihoods
Space and Experiences
Housing, Infrastructures and Energy
Urban Wellbeing
Rural Urban Interactions/Linkages

Each student admitted to the programme must complete 16 credits of coursework. Of this, 8 credits of core courses must be completed in the first semester (awaiting details on ethics course). In the second semester, the student must complete total of 6-credit elective courses either offered within the school or by other programmes at the university with the approval of a Provisional Academic Advisor. The elective courses can be a taught course or in seminar mode or a combination of the two.

A student must pass these courses to be eligible to defend her/his synopsis. The passing grade for each course will be B ONLY. It is mandatory for all students to complete the coursework, even those who have already completed their M.Phil degree.

PhD Course Structure

S. No.	Course Name	Core/Elective	Credits
1.	Foundations of Urban Studies	Core	4
2.	Methods for Urban Research	Core	4
3.	Research Ethics	Core	2
3.	Elective 1	Elective	4
4.	Elective 2	Elective	2

Foundations of Urban Studies (Core Course, 4 Credits)

The course builds newly-enrolled doctoral students’ understanding of the conceptual underpinnings, debates, and emergent concerns in the interdisciplinary field of Urban Studies. Students are likely to join with postgraduate training in different social sciences and this course builds their foundations in Urban Studies by introducing to them its key ideas through curated texts that demonstrate the diverse inputs which drive the field. Students will be asked to read these texts with care, invited to share their thoughts on the same in the spirit of debate, and encouraged to draw connections to their research interests.

The course begins by orienting students to the debate on disciplinarity (and interdisciplinarity), and tracing the shifts in Urban Studies that are at the same time related to larger moves in the social sciences. It then situates the varied meanings of ‘the urban’ through a brief overview of typologies and more recent discussions on planetarity and regional dimensions of the urban. The subsequent unit travels through important conceptual paradigms in Urban Studies from the ‘urban ecology’ of the Chicago School to Marxist geography, and spatial-quantitative paradigm to anti-colonial thought. With this grounding in place, the course considers critical urban questions of relevance to different world regions to enhance a global perspective. The course ends with students’ reflections on their work alongside emergent thinking around justice, care, and collaborative practice.

Methods for Urban Research (Core Course, 4 Credits)

The conceptual and methodological paradigm informing the field of urban studies was initially drawn from disciplines like sociology, anthropology, geography, urban design and planning. More recently interdisciplinary studies have paved the way for exploring a combination of methods that theorize issues relating to cities and regions that cut across different disciplinary domains. This course will enable students to move beyond the binary of qualitative and quantitative research methods. It is expected that they will be able to quantify the qualitative information gathered through oral interviews and critically analyze the quantitative data gathered from different sources.

It will begin by looking at some important approaches and research methods used in urban scholarship across India and worldwide. The first module will look at writings on cities in a historical context, production of mapping, cartography and census during the colonial period, use of archival and oral history methods to research in urban studies. The following module will introduce the students to spatial analysis used for understanding human settlement patterns. This will flow into the next module that will explain the capital circuit through which processes are being defined in an urban political economy. The fourth module will focus on the bypassed question of urban research on gender or sexuality filtered through a feminist approach. The scholars addressing women’s everyday experiences in a city are confronted with different kinds of gender-based stereotypes and biases and hence suggest some methodological interventions to retrieve the subjugated knowledge forms. The fifth module will discuss the methods and approaches that evolved in STS and the city literature to analyze infrastructure and built environment. The final module delineates the policy process approach, which unpacks the interplay of knowledge, power and politics embedded in the process of policy formulation and implementation.

Electives

Six credits of electives to be earned either from the courses offered within the School or from the PhD elective courses offered by other programmes at the University. The selection of elective courses will be decided by the scholar in consultation with Research Advisory Committee (RAC).

Expected learning outcomes. Upon completion of the degree, graduates should be able to:

Demonstrate advanced knowledge of the various aspects of historical and contemporary urbanization
Respectfully converse and meaningfully collaborate with academics and diverse publics towards social, economic, and policy goals
Design and conduct original research, including fieldwork, with necessary rigour Write a publishable monograph of high academic standards
Follow ethical principles in research and practice

The PhD program strictly adheres to the rules and regulations of the University Grants Commission, as they are enforced and revised from time to time. The current regulations in force can be found here.

The PhD program is guided by the “Regulations Relating to the Award of Doctor of Philosophy, 2021” of the Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD PhD Regulations 2021, hereafter), found here.

Course Code	Course Name	Credit
	Elective 2: Seminar - Urban Studies	4
	Elective 1: Conceptualizing and contextualizing Research	2
	Research Ethics	2
	Methods for Urban Research	4
	Foundations of Urban Studies	4