Amsterdam’s recent development has been criticised for its profit-centred and inequality-increasing dimensions: a declining social housing stock, rapidly gentrifying neighbourhoods, and central areas catering to mass tourism. At the same time, Amsterdam has a rich and well-researched history of grassroots initiatives resisting these trends and experimenting with alternative housing models and ways of building the city otherwise. How can these utopian projects be supported and expanded to more durably carve out different ways to live, work, care, and foster community and sustainability in the city? What can we learn from these projects, however currently limited in scale, about possible alternative urban futures?

Research on Amsterdam’s post-war proliferation of radical grassroots political experiments has shown their decisive role in countering the demolition of historic central areas and pressuring for greater democratic control, social inclusion, and environmental responsibility in urban design and policy. This PhD project aims to shed light on current initiatives that similarly and concretely promote another vision of the city, exploring their utopian contours, the challenges they face, and their possibly scalable lessons for urban policy, planning, and community life.

In investigating utopian collective initiatives in contemporary Amsterdam, the project pays particular attention to the dimensions of housing, ownership, and labour. What alternative projects for housing ourselves (beyond the mainstream rental and homeownership markets) are currently being experimented with in the city and how can they be expanded? Considering the city’s high housing costs and governmental push towards individual and mortgaged homeownership, the creation of affordable, collective, and de-commodified housing projects may allow for a change in people’s relationship to and reliance on paid work. While centred on the housing dimension, this project is also interested in the labour repercussions of such utopian initiatives. How do their members connect the dimensions of housing and productive and reproductive labour in their social critiques, practices, and visions for the city’s future? How can their knowledge and experiences inform policy, real estate, financial, and legal changes so that these initiatives can be supported in their growth and scalability?

Besides these overarching questions, the project also aims to examine (1) the everyday workings of these utopian initiatives (e.g., best practices in building knowledge and infrastructure); (2) their experiences dealing with legal, bureaucratic, and financial obstacles; (3) their link to or perspective on previously influential radical housing movements in the city (such as squatting); and (4) their interactions and relations with governmental authorities, especially the municipality of Amsterdam (e.g., through subsidies and regulations).

During your PhD trajectory, you will carry out research that is theoretically and societally relevant as well as methodologically and ethically sound by means of collecting and analysing in-depth qualitative data. Within four years, you will write your PhD dissertation. During this period, you will also teach in our Sociology programme (10% of your time) and present your work at international academic conferences and at public events.

The PhD project will be supervised by dr. Josien Arts, dr. Diana Zacca Thomaz, and dr. Kobe de Keere. Applicants are invited to develop a research proposal based on this project outline. The proposal allows you to specify and elaborate how you intend to address the questions posed in this advertisement. The template for the proposal can be found below (under “Application process and contact information”).