Digital archive and mapping  This seminar focuses on the inter-relationship of the following themes: the use of library sources for searching data; the issue of archiving data for the project; the question of data publication and its management; the establishment of a digital referencing system of the project and the question of the location of the project within academic genres.

Starting the project This workshop is aimed at making a precise statement as to what your first logical project action is. Supervision strategies vary from supervisor to supervisor and from discipline to discipline. But for all of us the question of situating the project is central. The workshop will look at two notions of situating which appear to be useful to the two different clusters of PhD projects, both addressing the question of “where is the project?” 

Locating the project  This workshop is held within project groups. The aim in each case is to use a discussion of the project proposal to provide orientation in literature lists, research questions, proposed activities and method literature. At the completion of this workshop you should have a more precise situating of the project in terms of subject area (what kind of material/environment will the project study and what kind of questions will it ask+) or (inter)disciplinary context (what research areas does it relate to?).

Design Research and research design will consider how design research (research involving speculative and design enquiry as a method) engages with the question of how to design research (define what activities will be useful to carry out. The discussions are made using pilot projects carried out at AHO in Systems Design.

Research empires and empirical research This workshop introduces the issue of research methods for urban studies, with a special relation to the projects under way within the PhD group. The discussions are made using projects carried out at AHO in the Institute of Urbanism (tbc)

Peer review project session Design and Urbanism project groups to rehearse issues for the end of term reviews, in terms of: Literature reviews, Mappings/visualisations, Project research questions, future project activities, first project outputs.

End of semester review finishes the term with a holistic discussion of the state of the project using the material presented through questions and discussion.