PhD Position Urban Utopias and Urban… at University of… · Amsterdam

Are you curious about current utopian initiatives in Amsterdam countering profit-centred urban development? Do you want to investigate bottom-up housing projects seeking to carve out different ways to live, work, care, and foster community and sustainability in the city? Join this PhD project and conduct qualitative research on such initiatives, contributing to theoretical and policy debates on alternative urban futures.

Urban utopias: Experiments in Amsterdam for living and working otherwise

Amsterdam’s recent development has been criticised for its profit-centred and inequality-increasing dimensions: a declining social housing stock, rapidly gentrifying neighbourhoods, and central areas catering to mass tourism. At the same time, Amsterdam has a rich and well-researched history of grassroots initiatives resisting these trends and experimenting with alternative housing models and ways of building the city otherwise. How can these utopian projects be supported and expanded to more durably carve out different ways to live, work, care, and foster community and sustainability in the city? What can we learn from these projects, however currently limited in scale, about possible alternative urban futures?

Research on Amsterdam’s post-war proliferation of radical grassroots political experiments has shown their decisive role in countering the demolition of historic central areas and pressuring for greater democratic control, social inclusion, and environmental responsibility in urban design and policy. This PhD project aims to shed light on current initiatives that similarly and concretely promote another vision of the city, exploring their utopian contours, the challenges they face, and their possibly scalable lessons for urban policy, planning, and community life.

In investigating utopian collective initiatives in contemporary Amsterdam, the project pays particular attention to the dimensions of housing, ownership, and labour. What alternative projects for housing ourselves (beyond the mainstream rental and homeownership markets) are currently being experimented with in the city and how can they be expanded? Considering the city’s high housing costs and governmental push towards individual and mortgaged homeownership, the creation of affordable, collective, and de-commodified housing projects may allow for a change in people’s relationship to and reliance on paid work. While centred on the housing dimension, this project is also interested in the labour repercussions of such utopian initiatives. How do their members connect the dimensions of housing and productive and reproductive labour in their social critiques, practices, and visions for the city’s future? How can their knowledge and experiences inform policy, real estate, financial, and legal changes so that these initiatives can be supported in their growth and scalability?

Besides these overarching questions, the project also aims to examine (1) the everyday workings of these utopian initiatives (e.g., best practices in building knowledge and infrastructure); (2) their experiences dealing with legal, bureaucratic, and financial obstacles; (3) their link to or perspective on previously influential radical housing movements in the city (such as squatting); and (4) their interactions and relations with governmental authorities, especially the municipality of Amsterdam (e.g., through subsidies and regulations).

During your PhD trajectory, you will carry out research that is theoretically and societally relevant as well as methodologically and ethically sound by means of collecting and analysing in-depth qualitative data. Within four years, you will write your PhD dissertation. During this period, you will also teach in our Sociology programme (10% of your time) and present your work at international academic conferences and at public events.

The PhD project will be supervised by dr. Josien Arts, dr. Diana Zacca Thomaz, and dr. Kobe de Keere. Applicants are invited to develop a research proposal based on this project outline. The proposal allows you to specify and elaborate how you intend to address the questions posed in this advertisement. The template for the proposal can be found below (under “Application process and contact information”).

What are you going to do

• Systematically review theoretical and empirical literatures relevant to the project;
• Conduct independent qualitative fieldwork (mainly interviews and participant observation but also possibly archival research) in Amsterdam;
• Contribute to academic debates on urban utopian initiatives (their everyday practices, visions, challenges, and their policy and theoretical implications) by writing a PhD dissertation and presenting findings at conferences and events;
• Follow AISSR PhD courses on theory, methodology, and academic writing;
• Teach in the Sociology department’s educational programmes (10% of appointment).

What do you have to offer

We are looking for candidates who:

• have a university master’s degree in the social sciences or humanities;
• are fluent in English and Dutch (minimum C1 proficiency level);
• have substantial fieldwork experience with qualitative interviewing and/or participant observation (e.g., as part of your thesis or another research project), including research ethics and qualitative data handling;
• are familiar with research in urban studies as well as social theory;
• (not essential but helpful:) have experience contributing to social projects or movements in the city (e.g., by volunteering, participating in meetings and public actions, etc.).

What do we have to offer

We offer a temporary employment contract of 38 hours per week for a maximum term of four years. The initial employment is for one year. Following a positive assessment, this term will be extended by a maximum of three years, which should result in the conferral of a doctorate. You will attend courses offered by the AISSR and the Graduate School of Social Sciences as part of the PhD program. In addition to doing research, publicizing your findings, and participating in academic events, you will be involved in teaching (roughly 10% of your time).

For this position the University Job Classification profile “Promovendus” applies. Your salary will be €3,059 gross per month in the first year and will increase to €3,881 in the final year, based on full-time employment of 38 hours per week and in keeping with the Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities. We additionally offer an extensive package of secondary benefits, including 8% holiday allowance and a year-end bonus of 8.3%. The UvA offers excellent possibilities for further professional development and education.

You will work here

This PhD position is embedded within the programme group Political Sociology of the Department of Sociology and the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR) Sociology at the UvA is characterised by its theoretical, methodological, and thematic diversity. Faculty members are valued for drawing on different approaches and perspectives, offering scholarship and teaching that represents the discipline’s different attempts to critically interpret and tackle society’s challenges and contradictions. The AISSR is the research school for faculty members and PhD candidates from the Departments of Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, and Geography, Planning, and International Development. It is committed to fundamental and engaged research that pushes the boundaries of the social sciences.

The PhD position is part of the AISSR Amsterdam Programme which recruits eight PhD candidates across the institute’s four departments. The candidates will form a cohort and collaborate on innovative research methods that generate value for both the city of Amsterdam and the social sciences. All PhD candidates in the program will receive doctoral training from the AISSR and be affiliated with the Centre for Urban Studies and Urban Impact Lab.

If you recognise yourself in this profile and are interested in the position, we look forward to receiving your:

• CV (max. 2 pages)
• Motivation letter (max. 1 page)
• Research proposal based on this project outline using this template (max. 1400 words excl. reference list)

Please merge these documents into a single PDF.

You can apply via the red button until September 1st, 2026.

Interviews will take place on 16 and 18 September 2026.

For questions about the vacancy, you can contact: Dr. Diana Zacca Thomaz (d.zaccathomaz@uva.nl) or Dr. Josien Arts (j.arts@uva.nl).