International PhD Summer School
Ivan Bandura for Unsplash, edited by Anna Karla Almeida, 2022
Call for participation
Designing the socio-ecological transition #2
Unveiling palimpsests of exploitation:
towards a new alliance between ecology and economy in marginal regions
LAB-U EPFL ENAC EDAR
Charleroi (BE) – Lens (FR)
2 – 5 September 2023
The International PhD Summer School Designing the socio-ecological transition #2 intends to continue the academic and transdisciplinary investigation on the social and ecological transition of marginal spaces and territories of exploitation launched by HRC in December 2022.
The 2022 PhD Seminar sketched an initial portrayal of current research on critical post-extraction territories and marginal spaces scenarios. Different methodologies and approaches to the topic have been debated, and the need emerged to further explore possible actions to operate in contexts of energetic instability, resource contraction, landscapes degradation, and climate urgency.
The 2023 International PhD Summer School will continue the reflection launched with the seminar while integrating an onsite approach allowing PhD students to confront themselves and their research hypothesis with concrete territories and actors. It will therefore represent an opportunity to test the previously formulated hypotheses on an area characterized by permanent land exploitation due to a past mining phase.
Through the fieldwork, and thanks to the synergy with the International Post-Mining Network, we will establish a dialogue and a comparison between, on one side, the ongoing urban and landscape projects and socio-economic policies in the Charleroi and Lens regions and on the other side, a new territorial reading that will be set up during the School, both by unveiling the palimpsests of exploitations and reclamations and by testing a set of hypotheses on the socio-ecological transition. The first hypothesis strikes on the need to recover the sites’ urban qualities.
Complementary, the second hypothesis examines the historical potentialities of these territories that can emerge as drivers and pioneers of the socio-ecological transition.
Program & Output
The Summer School consists of four days of theoretical sessions, site visits, and a PhD conference; during the conference, students will present and debate their research – or parts of it – with a short contribution (max. 12 minutes) related to the proposed topic.
They will further expand their contribution with a paper (10’000 characters max.) to be written after the Summer School. In the paper, PhD students will elaborate on the most significant theoretical and methodological impacts of the summer school on their own hypothesis and methodology – by relating their research with the proposed readings, onsite interactions, keynote conferences, and discussions.
The paper should be returned to [email protected] by November 2023.
Admission
The call is addressed to doctoral students in the fields of Architecture, Urbanism, Urban History, Landscape, Geography, and Environmental Sciences, as well as Humanities and Political and Social Sciences interested in the topic.
Up to 12 doctoral students will attend the Summer School and be selected based on a motivation letter in English or French (max. 500 words) and a CV.
The abovementioned documents should be submitted by July 19, 2023, via email to [email protected].
Cost and accommodation
The PhD Summer School fee is 100 CHF.
The organisers will provide accommodation from Friday 1st September to Tuesday 5th September, as well as fieldwork expenses.
Travel costs to the PhD summer School are in charge of PhD students.
Organization
The Summer School is an initiative of the Habitat Research Center, EPFL, and is part of the study plan of the EDAR doctoral program of the EPFL Doctoral School (EDOC).
The event, co-organized with the chair “post-mining”, seeks to reinforce ongoing collaborations and foster future international collaborations on the topic, in Europe and beyond.
Conceived as an EDAR Doctoral Course, it will give access to 3 credits. For more information, contact [email protected].
Send a motivation letter + CV until July 19, 2023 to [email protected]
Scientific and Organizing Committee
Prof. Paola Viganò
(HRC/Lab-U, EPFL)
Prof. Elena Cogato Lanza
(Lab-U, EPFL)
Prof. Tom Avermaete
(ETH Zurich)
Dr. Tommaso Pietropolli
(HRC, EPFL)
Co-promotor
Prof. Béatrice Mariolle
(ENSAPL, Chaire Acclimater les Territoires Post-miniers)
Seminar’s official languages are English and French.
PAST INITIATIVES
The International PhD Seminar 2022 Post-extraction territories in transition: Designing the socio-ecological transition in post-carbon marginal spaces proposes a European and transatlantic dialogue around the questions of the social and ecological transition (post-carbon) of marginal spaces, namely the territories of exploitation as the ancient coal territories on the two sides of the Atlantic.
The Seminar aims to provide initial cartography of the current research on critical scenarios of post-extraction and marginal spaces. It is an initiative of the Habitat Research Center, ENAC EPFL, as part of the doctoral study plan of the EDAR program (EPFL Doctoral School – EDOC) and will give access to 2 ETCS credits.
The Seminar is addressed to doctoral students in the fields of Architecture, Urbanism, Urban History, Landscape, Geography, Engineering, and Environmental Sciences, as well as Humanities, Political and Social Sciences.
International PhD Seminar (2021)
Designing cities in a changing world addressed doctoral students in the fields of Architecture, Urbanism, Global Health, and Humanities and Social Sciences, interested in the use of the One Health concept as a tool to tackle urban themes (the city, the territory and the ways in which we inhabit them).
The so-called One Health (OH) approach is based on the inexorable links between human, animal, and ecosystem health and on the added value of interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral collaborations in this domain.
International PhD Seminar (2019)
The Phd Seminar “Invention of Carouge, Fifty Years after” was organized on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the book by Swiss historian of art, architecture and urbanism André Corboz that was published in 1968. Focused on the study of the new town of Carouge
(planned and built by the Savoyard state in the 18th century near Geneva and later incorporated as a borough of the latter), “the invention of Carouge”, was an ambitious attempt to combine a historical case study, urban analysis and planning theory. The topic of the book also represented a vector of cultural exchange between Turin and Switzerland in the following years, most notably on the occasion of the exhibition on Carouge organized by Turin’s State Archives in the mid-1980s.
International PhD Seminar (2018)
The Seminar aimed at discussing the operation
of “mapping palimpsests”, its tradition and future developments, as a scientific and methodological question. From the thematic point of view, the
three categories of permanence, persistence and disappearance could be seen as clues of today’s discourses about preservation, recycling and demolition processes. Within this framework, this Call welcomed papers reflecting on the chronological interconnections between: the history of the territory, construction, materials, processes, practices; the cultural heritage
(both built and unbuilt); dynamics of mobility, energy, air, hydrology; evolution of land use or land cover (soil and subsoil); territorial infrastructures (visible and invisible). The understanding of the “territory as palimpsest” and the related cartographies inspired by it are today part of the renewed systemic and metabolic approaches to territorial phenomena, paradigms that broaden and open new opportunities for a redefinition of the notion of palimpsest as a lens through which to cope with contemporary challenges.
International PhD Seminar (2017)
The Seminar aimed to discuss the actuality and the problems related to Comparison as a Scientific Method and its heuristic efficiency, while focusing on its devices, purposes and challenges. From the thematic point of view, the students have been encouraged to position their contribution in relation to two ways (specific to the Comparative Approach) of orienting the play between differences and similarities: a) the Idiographic Approach (tendency to specify) where the comparative effort is directed towards understand the meaning of contingent, unique, and often cultural or subjective phenomena – typical of the Humanities; b) the Nomothetic Approach
(tendency to generalize) where the comparative effort is directed towards the derivation of laws that explain types in general, where the pursuit of recurrences among different contexts is taken as a sign and proof of the same phenomenon – typical of the Natural Sciences.
The seminar was organized by the Laboratory of Urbanism EPFL , HRC EPFL, Institute for Geography and Sustainability UNIL in the frame of Swissuniversities Program for the Doctoral Program of Architecture and Sciences of the City EDAR EPFL.
