The Royal Danish Academy posts vacant PhD scholarship at Institute of Architectu

A PhD scholarship is offered at ‘The Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Design and Conservation’ in the following topic: ’Opportunities and Obstacles in Institutional Establishment in Small and Medium-Sized Cities – the Case of Integration of Campus Kalundborg in the Old City’’.

The Royal Danish Academy invites applications for a fully funded three-year PhD scholarship at the Institute of Architecture, Urbanism, and Landscape. The scholarship will be based in Kalundborg and situated within the emerging cross-disciplinary environment of Campus Kalundborg. The expected start date is 1 October 2026 or as soon as possible after. The application deadline is 22 May 2026 at 12:00 pm UTC1.

Framework This call concerns a research project on forms of mutual and institutional exchange between industry, public authorities, educational institutions, and local communities. The project will examine how urban, spatial, and organisational synergies are produced, negotiated, and sustained in peripheral contexts. It will explore how new institutional arrangements emerge, how they shape everyday urban life, and how they influence processes of social integration, spatial organization, and local development.

Institute of Architecture, Urbanism, and Landscape in Kalundborg The institute’s academic fields focus on the spatial transformation and development of architecture, cities, and cultural landscapes, in both contemporary and historical perspective. We are deeply engaged in producing well-informed proposals for buildings, settlements, urban spaces, cities, and landscapes, guided by relevant research and artistic development work. A key ambition is to understand and make productive use of changing societal conditions to realize these aims.

In our Kalundborg environment, we place particular emphasis on seizing the opportunities created by the location itself: to develop an open, experimental, and innovative study and research environment in collaboration with the city’s other educational institutions, businesses, and civil society. Strong local anchoring is combined with a global outlook. We aim to cultivate an academic milieu that uses the differences between the urban and the rural as productive grounds for critical inquiry, intellectual openness, and new ways of asking questions about the world.

Campus Kalundborg Campus Kalundborg is a distinctive educational and research environment built on the strong tradition of collaboration between public and private partners in Kalundborg. It currently brings together nine educational programmes across different fields and disciplines, with strengths in biotechnology and energy. These include vocational programmes, professional bachelor’s programmes, a university bachelor’s programme, master’s programmes, and PhD education.

A defining feature of Campus Kalundborg is the opportunity for students to develop interdisciplinary competences by combining a strong grounding in their own discipline with knowledge, skills, and experience gained through collaboration across programmes. This may include, for example, encounters between biotechnology engineering, architecture, and biomanufacturing.

The shared physical campus provides a strong basis for students and researchers to take course elements across programmes and to study and work together across disciplinary boundaries. These opportunities are further supported by Campus Kalundborg’s partners, including University College Absalon, the University of Copenhagen, the Technical University of Denmark, TEKNIKA, Northwest Zealand Business and Gymnasium Education, The Royal Danish Academy, Novo Nordisk, Novonesis, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, and Kalundborg Municipality.

Research Theme What happens when a city such as Kalundborg develops into a centre for higher education and, over a short period of time, receives a large influx of new study places? How does the establishment of a new campus influence civic life, students, researchers, educators, and the business community? Can existing traditions of industrial symbiosis inspire new forms of cooperation between industry, society, and academia?

For much of the twentieth century, state institutions in Denmark were primarily concentrated in larger cities and metropolitan regions. Higher education and research institutions were in particular largely established in major urban centres. In recent years, however, this tendency has been challenged. Through a combination of local initiatives and state-led revitalisation and decentralisation policies, public and educational institutions have increasingly been established or relocated in small and medium-sized towns and cities outside the major metropolitan areas. Many of these initiatives focus on higher education and often result in new forms of institutional clustering and emerging campus environments. These developments are commonly accompanied by expectations of synergy, not only between institutions themselves, but also between educational environments, local communities, and regional industries.

Kalundborg provides a particularly relevant case for investigating these processes. Historically, the city has been a central middle age city based on trade using the harbour. It has later been shaped by large-scale industrial production and infrastructure, including Denmark’s largest power plant and the internationally recognised model of industrial symbiosis. At the same time, it has been affected by administrative restructuring, industrial transformation, and shifting employment patterns. In recent years, Kalundborg has experienced renewed growth through the expansion of knowledge-intensive industries, particularly within the pharmaceutical and life science sectors, as well as through state-led educational initiatives such as Campus Kalundborg and affiliated university programmes. These developments have positioned the city as an emerging centre for higher education and research within a relatively short period of time.

This transformation raises a broader set of critical questions. How to integrate Campus Kalundborg and the old city? How does the establishment of a new campus affect civic life, social relations, housing patterns, and everyday urban practices? In what ways does it affect students, researchers, educators, residents, and the business community? To what extent can new institutional configurations foster meaningful and lasting forms of mutual influence and cooperation, building on existing traditions of industrial symbiosis while extending them towards new forms of collaboration between industry, society, and academia? How do institutions interact with local conditions, and what barriers and opportunities shape mutual exchange and integration? The project may also investigate how spatial arrangements, planning frameworks, and governance practices influence these relations and condition possibilities for interaction and collaboration.

We are seeking a PhD student for a project that investigates this overall theme, with Kalundborg both as a case and as a lens on the wider theme.

PhD Focus Based on this thematic framework, applicants are invited to formulate an individual research project. The proposal should clearly define its research problem, theoretical framing, methodological approach, and expected contribution within the overall theme of the call.

The scholarship will be based in Kalundborg, which is considered an important condition for sustained engagement with local conditions and institutional environments. The project proposal should explain how the candidate intends to engage with relevant local actors and organisations, and how such engagement will inform the empirical focus and methodological design of the research. The candidate is also expected to contribute positively to the local research and teaching environment in Kalundborg and to develop the project in close dialogue with supervisors and relevant partners.

Applicant Eligibility Applicants must hold a degree equivalent to a Danish master’s degree (180 ECTS / 3-year bachelor’s degree plus 120 ECTS / 2-year master’s degree) in architecture. Applicants with strong specialisation in urbanism and/or planning will be preferred.

Applicants from adjacent fields such as anthropology, geography, and sociology may be considered, if their academic background and proposed project demonstrate a strong focus on spatial questions.

If you have completed your degree abroad, it will be assessed by the Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science before enrolment and employment can take place. The Royal Danish Academy will assist with the assessment process if you are selected for the scholarship. Practical information is available here.

Terms of Employment Enrolment takes place with a view to obtaining a PhD degree and leads to salaried full-time employment for a period of three years in accordance with the agreement between the Danish Ministry of Finance and the Danish Confederation of Professional

Associations (AC), including the protocol on graduate fellowships (Annex 5). The salary consists of a seniority-based base salary and a non-pensionable allowance.

The PhD programme is structured under the provisions of Ministerial Order no. 1039 of 27 August 2013 on the PhD Programme at the Universities and Certain Higher Artistic Educational Institutions.

The executive order is available here. The Danish PhD education is a three-year full-time education consisting of independent research under supervision, 30 ECTS PhD courses, shift of research environment (mainly research stay abroad) and knowledge dissemination.

Application Requirements There is no application form. Applications must be written in English and submitted electronically. The application must include:

• a project proposal of no more than 10.000 characters including spaces (excluding the list of references and timetable), including:

  • project title
  • project abstract (approx. 500 characters, including spaces)
  • objectives
  • research questions (one to three questions)
  • if relevant, a hypothesis
  • brief state of the art and expected contribution
  • theoretical positioning and methodological approach
  • research design (structure) and timetable
  • expected output including academic publication and dissemination. The latter should include preliminary ideas for engaging with local partners and stakeholders.
  • a list of anticipated publications and dissemination venues for the project

• CV

• documentation of educational merits, other qualifications, and previous activities

• a list of published papers/publications (if applicable)

• a portfolio of previous work and completed studies.

Please submit your application online via the “Apply for position” button no later than 22 May 2026 at 12:00 pm UTC1. For further information about the application requirements, please contact HR Employee Sine Kildevang Madsen at skmad@kglakademi.dk.

Application material received after the deadline will not be taken into consideration. Anyone who meets the requirement of a graduate-level academic degree is encouraged to apply for the scholarship regardless of age, gender, race, religion, or ethnicity.

Assessment Procedure The scholarship is advertised in accordance with the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science’s Executive Order of 12 April 2019 on the employment of artistic and scientific staff at the higher artistic educational institutions within the remit of the Ministry of Higher Education and Science.

After the application deadline, and in consultation with the appointment committee, the head of institute will select a number of applicants for academic assessment by an impartial expert committee. Applicants are selected based on which candidates are considered by the appointment committee to best meet the overall criteria set out in this call.

All applicants will be informed whether their application proceeds to the next stage of the selection procedure, and those selected will be informed of the composition of the expert committee. The expert committee will assess the selected applicants with a focus on the research area, methods, skills, and requirements described above. The committee will conclude whether each applicant is qualified. Assessed applicants will have an opportunity to comment on their assessment.

Following the assessment process, the appointment committee will decide which of the qualified applicants should be offered the scholarship. The appointment committee may choose to interview one or more qualified applicants.

Further Information Information about the Institute of Architecture, Urbanism, and Landscape can be found here.

General information about PhD study is available at the PhD School’s website.

Questions regarding the scholarship can be addressed to Head of Institute Katrine Lotz, email klotz@kglakademi.dk or phone +45 4170 1689.

About The Royal Danish Academy The Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Design, Conservation is an internationally recognised academy that educates professionally creative graduates at the highest level and develops new knowledge that creates value for society and the labour market. The Royal Danish Academy is a public institution under the Ministry of Higher Education and Science and has approximately 1,700 students and 350 full-time staff equivalents. Read more at www.royaldanishacademy.com