PhD Candidate in Social work, with a focus on international migration and refugee studies, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. Deadline: 29 June 2025.
This three-years position is a part of the ANCHOR: Advancing Neighborhood, Community, and HOusing for the integration of Refugee families, an inter-disciplinary project funded under the NTNU’s strategic research area: Community. ANCHOR focuses on how housing and neighborhood environments can support refugee families’ wellbeing, social integration, and sense of belonging. This position will focus on Norwegian municipal contexts, examining how physical and social aspects of housing intersect with the everyday lives of refugee families with children.
ANCHOR investigates how entangled social, political, and environmental processes shape the housing experiences, wellbeing, and sense of belonging among refugee families in Norway. By focusing on non-linear and sometimes unexpected outcomes of policy, planning, and community design, the project aims to reveal how conventional approaches can inadvertently deepen uncertainties or, conversely, foster more inclusive forms of community life.
Challenging the traditional separation of social from material and environmental factors, ANCHOR takes a holistic and interdisciplinary approach, drawing on social and architectural anthropology, urban planning, social work, childhood studies, and public health. Central to this endeavor is an emphasis on intersectionality, which recognizes that factors such age, gender, cultural background, and generational dynamics can shape different layers of vulnerability or resilience within refugee families. Methodologically, the project combines creative, participatory methods with established qualitative techniques. This multi-method strategy seeks to co-create knowledge with refugee families, local communities, NGOs, and municipal authorities.
This project is a collaboration among the Departments of Architecture and Planning, Social Work and Public Health and Nursing, and it includes two PhD positions. The successful PhD candidate will work closely with their counterpart in the Department of Architecture and Planning. Norwegian and English are the main languages in use at the Department.
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 