WE ARE HIRING !

We are looking for two doctoral candidates to join the interdisciplinary research project “Flows in the Construction Sector. Urban-Environmental Histories of Labour, Materials, and Money.” The project investigates the Brussels construction sector as a nexus of labour, materials, and capital, from the nineteenth century to the present.

The PhD projects will be developed within a collaboration between VUB Architectural Engineering, Social History of Capitalism, and Cosmopolis Centre for Urban Research. Candidates are invited to formulate their own research proposal within one of three possible trajectories: mobility, migration and entrepreneurship; risk, precarity and responsibility; or extraction, circulation and sustainability.

Applications are open until 8 July 2026. The positions are full-time doctoral scholarships, with a planned starting date of 1 November 2026. Interested candidates can apply via jobs.vub.be and should submit a CV, diplomas, motivation letter, research vision and a PDF of their master’s thesis.

For more information, you can consult the full vacancy texts here: English version and Dutch version.