Research Proposal 

Researchers

Research Group

Cultural sustainability: significance and implications

The aim is to examine the significance and implications of cultural sustainability in the context of ecological emergency and increasing social inequalities. We address both the role of cultural and artistic projects in sustainable development (culture as the fourth pillar of sustainability) and culture as sustainable development.

IDENTICAT

Nature-based school environments for climate adaptation and multiple co-benefits

Nearly 50% of schools in European cities are in areas with strong urban heat island effects (>2ºC). Cities are increasingly interested in developing strategies and actions to build nature-based school environments in a participatory way, that is, by co-creating nature-based interventions to respond to climate change and for co-benefits (promoting urban biodiversity, enhancing wellbeing, fostering learning, etc.). We are looking for students who are interested in exploring how the ways nature-based schoolyards are co-designed and maintained shape the resultant co-benefits.

TURBA

Transformative climate change education in cities 

Climate change education is gaining momentum as a key tool to help children and citizens to understand and address the causes and impacts of climate change. This research line is interested in examining how climate change education is conceived and developed in cities in formal and/or non-formal settings through the lenses of post-sustainability education and climate justice. It also seeks to analyze the implications of different approaches in terms of changing citizens’ frames of reference and engaging and empowering them on actions relating to climate change.

TURBA

Community resilience to climate change and transformative learning

Community-led initiatives towards climate change in cities (e.g., urban green infrastructure and agroecology projects linked to civic ecology practices, energy citizenship actions, public awareness interventions) involve a myriad of learning processes, both for individuals and in a social sense. We are looking for students interested in understanding how people share, transmit and even develop new knowledge (and skills) through being engaged in such community-based initiatives, and how such learning relates to social transformation and urban climate resilience.

TURBA

Exploring the implications of (urban) nature-based solutions  (NBS) to tackle the climate emergency

This thesis will explore through the prism of urban political ecology, critical environmental studies and/or environmental justice the socio-environmental implications of the implementation of Nature-Based solutions (NBS) at the urban and metropolitan scale to tackle the impending climate emergency, including the unintended impacts, distributional issues and the conflicts around them. It may focus also on how NBS open up/produce new ecosystem services for citizens.  It will seek a comparative perspective.

The “twin green and digital transitions” in the urban context.

The European Green Deal focuses on promoting the “twin transitions”, that is, the parallel pursuit of the green and digital transitions, which render sustainability a problem to be solved through (primarily technological) innovation. The city of Barcelona has adopted the “twin transition” discourse, which is very prominent in visions for how the circular economy is to be implemented at the urban scale. The thesis will critically analyse the socio-technical imaginaries linked to the “twin transitions” and the “circular economy”, and assess how innovation, technology and digitalisation produce green policies in Barcelona.

The political ecology of agriculture’s digitalization and the agriculture 4.0.

Drones, robots and big data are becoming important actors along the agricultural chain. This PhD thesis studies the turn towards an “agriculture 4.0.”, focusing on emerging power dynamics (e.g. between small and big farmers, ag companies and farmers, etc.). It will also question to what extent this institutionally-led plan really target farmers’ needs and how it addresses agriculture sustainability on its full breath, that is, considering economic, social and environmental factors. Which rationales sustain the introduction of such technologies in agriculture? What material aspects need to be considered (e.g. conditions, limitations that these technologies are tied to)? How labor dynamics are changed? How agrarian dynamics are shifted and to what effect? Can the digitalization be emancipatory for small-medium farmers? 

Hydrosocial cycles in times of climate emergency: politics, technology and governance

This research line investigates the reconfigurations of hydrosocial cycles -spanning both urban centers and larger territorial units- driven by the intensifying global climate emergency. Adopting a political ecology perspective, the focus is on analyzing the political and material processes that are reshaping water governance across the Global North and the Global South. This includes examining the deployment of new infrastructures (like desalination and reclaimed water), shifting political-economic debates (such as remunicipalization, financialization, and privatization), and the complex interplay with urbanization processes (like suburban fragmentation in the North and informality and contested access in the South).

WINE

Political ecologies of extreme heat

This research area invites PhD candidates to critically interrogate how extreme heat -encompassing both intense heatwaves and chronic high temperatures- is fundamentally transforming everyday life. We see heat as a powerful, disruptive force that alters urban metabolisms by compounding existing pressures on energy and water flows, while also introducing new crises in social ties, labor conditions, and social reproduction. Crucially, we seek PhD projects that, from a political ecology and/or environmental justice perspective, investigate the complex links and trade-offs between water security and energy security, and how these create uneven vulnerability to heat across populations. A major focus is both on the diverse strategies for adaptation to heat in the urban space and social infrastructures (e.g. climate shelters), as well as on how heat challenges the presumed safety of the home.