Doctoral Research and Education aim to build the foundations for a specifically focused and solid academic career in Research. Through this third stage of higher education, scholars understand the methodologies for deeper knowledge over a concrete area of their investigation. However, despite the ‘Sciences of the Artificial,’ Design and Architecture blend a technological side with a traditional one belonging to the world of art and humanities. This double-faced personality opens a broader scope for possibilities in addressing the world of research and, therefore, multiple approaches to Doctoral Research and Education.

In an increasingly more complex space for the ‘Sciences of the Artificial’, critical uncertainties like globalization, natural disasters, environmental depletion, and global epidemics will be crucial problems in the future. Such multifaceted problems demand new solutions and unconventional approaches, leading us to consider a cross-disciplinary design education and research model. (Muratovski, 2016).

Interdisciplinary collaboration among different areas of knowledge in the same global design discipline, like Design and Architecture on a common project, or a multidisciplinary design approach to problems from joint disciplines like Anthropology and Architecture are positive steps towards a better framing of problem tackling. However, Transdisciplinary ways of working call for a ‘fusion of disciplines’ – a way of working in which designers have ‘transgressed’ or ‘transcended’ their disciplinary norms and have adapted ways of working from other disciplines (Lawrence and Després, 2004). Designers capable of working in a transdisciplinary mode can work in cross-disciplinary teams and lead them (Muratovski, 2016).

The Bilbao Hub of the EAD 2023 conference aims to work as a catalyser for Doctoral Research and Education in southern Europe by gathering and putting together the exploding variety of methods and visions emerging in recent years and extracting and analysing common and divergent visions. 

Submissions must reach the conference organisers by 07 April, 2023. We invite:

• 3.000-4,000-word scientific papers, we also encourage contributions like: 
• 3.000-word position papers appropriately grounded and referenced 
• Papers of a similar length (10-16 pages) based on a PhD or Masters project with considerable graphical content, duly balanced with text and descriptions 
• Posters (A1 portrait) and Digital Film (5-10 min)

Additional information on Submissions for Individual Hub Hosts. Please see the Bilbao host website for further details.

Themes of enquiry/questions: 

• How do you address Doctoral Research and Education in your university, research group, or doctoral program? 
• Doctoral Research and Education methods, trends, initiatives… 
• New approaches to Doctoral Research and Education in a time where climate awareness, non-human actors, and gender concerns are moving architecture and design onto a more social approach. 
• Inter, Multi or Transdisciplinary projects, approaches, or initiatives for research. 
• How do you tackle your own doctoral research? Is it more related to technology and science or linked to the social, humanistic, and/or artistic side of Design and Architecture?