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Doctoral Programme

An interdisciplinary Doctoral Programme that bridges research and practice to shape sustainable and equitable futures

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The IIHS (Institution Deemed to be) University’s Doctoral Programme is a five-year, interdisciplinary, full-time programme of study towards the degree of a PhD in Urban Studies and Practice.

The Programme is designed to bring together a cohort of scholars interested in working across disciplines and professional sectors to shape sustainable and equitable futures. Departing from singular entry points, it is interested in fostering and generating scholarship on how the social, economic, spatial, ecological, political, and institutional combine and are implicated in different ways within India’s rural and urban transitions.

To do so, the Programme encourages research across the spectrum of human settlements and linked social-ecological-technological systems across semi-wild through rural to metropolitan contexts, as well as across natural and built environments.

It seeks to produce knowledge that is rooted in the realities and dynamics of Indian cities, towns, and villages, and across diverse geographies and ecologies while drawing from knowledge across the Global South and North. It does so to create knowledge relevant to understanding and analysing Indian urban and rural transitions and enabling interdisciplinary research, practices, policies and interventions towards sustainable and equitable outcomes.

The Doctoral Programme has a set of new and innovative features:

  • Rootedness in Indian realities and in global epistemologies of the urban Global South.
  • An interdisciplinary pedagogy that responds to the complex inter-sectoral nature of cities and urbanisation.
  • Explicit links to actual on-ground experiences of the urban to inform academic learning and training to establish a direct bridge between theory and practice with issues of immediate and practical importance to Indian urbanisation.
  • A commitment to research on, from, and within practice, as well as the production of new theory.
  • Engagement with a whole range of settlements, from metropolitan areas to the rapidly urbanising frontier of small town and large village conglomerations.
  • A rooted but globally attuned sensibility that will leverage the best of IIHS’ extensive international networks and partners to build a world-class teaching and research programme.

Candidates admitted to the University’s Doctoral Programme will be distributed across the University’s Schools and matched with suitable supervising faculty.

The University’s Doctoral Programme will be a coursework-based, interdisciplinary programme comprising four elements:

  • Core Courses, a set of required modules spread over the first two years, including in theory, methods, research design, research ethics, pedagogy and teaching.
  • Elective courses, which are designed to give PhD scholars both depth in a particular research theme as well as sufficient opportunity for interdisciplinary knowledge generation across a subset of them.
  • Doctoral seminars, distributed across the first two years.
  • Field research, over a period of 1 to 1.5 years.

Career Trajectories

Doctoral scholars from the University will have a wide range of career options:

  • Academics: The interdisciplinary nature of the Programme enables doctoral scholars to explore academic opportunities in diverse disciplines, including but not limited to, the social sciences; spatial disciplines; urban sectoral disciplines; public policy, law and governance; technology; as well as the arts and humanities.
  • Applied Research: Doctoral scholars can work in multiple capacities in prominent Indian and global research institutions and think tanks.
  • Policy: Doctoral scholars can work in public administration, public policy, and the civil services.
  • Practice: Doctoral scholars can work with urban consulting, advisory, and management firms, where specialised interdisciplinary knowledge and cutting-edge skills make them distinctive hires.
  • Enterprise Sector: Doctoral scholars can pursue opportunities in private and public sector organisations, in key positions across a wide variety of areas pertaining to sustainable urban transformation.
  • Entrepreneurship: Doctoral scholars can start their own entrepreneurial ventures, especially as social entrepreneurs or public entrepreneurs, to provide innovative solutions to address various aspects of urban transformation and sustainability.

Prospectus

Access the Prospectus to learn more about this programme, the admissions process, key dates, courses, and more, for the academic year 2025–26.

Download the Prospectus
Pre-register for the Doctoral Programme.
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