Innovation for Sustainability PhD 3 years Full-time

The PhD programme in Innovation for Sustainability is based at the Faculty of Technology, Art and Design (TKD), in cooperation with the Centre for Welfare and Labour Research (SVA).

The goal of the programme is to qualify candidates for research, teaching, development work, and other highly qualified work in the field of innovation for sustainability. The programme is based on core competence from the departments of Product Design, Art, Design and Drama and Computer Science at TKD, and SVA.

The courses are also offered to other PhD programmes at OsloMet and to candidates outside OsloMet, provided there are vacant places.

The overall aim of the PhD programme is to contribute to sustainable development and welfare for all through human-centred and cultural research and innovation strategies.

The programme combines theoretical and practice-oriented perspectives through a social constructivist approach with various types of knowledge suitable to a diversity of contexts and professional practices.

It is thus rooted in OsloMet’s position as a university directed towards professional studies, with close links to the community and working life outside academia.

The PhD programme will prepare the candidates for societal needs, related to private and public sector as well as academia.

The programme’s unique approach is its combination of design and aesthetics with computer science and social sciences in an interdisciplinary setting. The programme is characterized by interdisciplinarity and ethical awareness, and by theoretical and methodological pluralism.

It offers three mandatory courses, each 5 ECTS, in philosophy of science, method and innovation, which introduce basic theories and practices with special focus on sustainability and interdisciplinarity.

Additionally, the programme offers five elective courses addressing different perspectives on sustainability: place-based, social, individual, aesthetic, and educational.

Sustainability is understood as a result of cultural, social, artistic, technological, economic and environmental factors and contains an awareness of ethicality and responsibility.

Culture, defined here as human thinking, behaviour, habits, and attitudes, is regarded as the foundational component. Innovation, understood as ideas or inventions that are practically implemented for value creation, is necessary to achieve transformation to a sustainable development.

The programme will push the candidates to develop new and improved products, systems, and processes by ways of interdisciplinary approaches and various technologies.

Design thinking, creativity and entrepreneurship are key elements, and interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and problem-based methodologies that involve a broad spectrum of societal stakeholders in defining and executing research, are central.

The PhD programme consists of an educational (coursework) component (30 ECTS credits) and a research component comprising the doctoral thesis (150 ECTS credits).

The programme is intended to be completed within an effective researcher training period of three years, alternatively four years including mandatory duties such as teaching and applications for external funding.

The requirements for the PhD degree are established in the Provision for the Degree of Philosophiae doctor a (PhD) at OsloMet - Oslo Metropolitan University.

Upon completion and passing of the programme, the candidate will be awarded the degree PhD in Innovation for Sustainability. The candidate’s specialization will be named on the transcript and diploma.