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MPhil/PhD
We offer opportunities to pursue original and significant research, providing support and supervision from the faculty’s own internationally respected body of specialists, and from UCL’s wider community of leading academics.
We also work closely with external partners, including businesses, policymakers and local communities.
MPhil/PhD programmes by school
- Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA)
Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis MPhil/PhD
The main areas of research with the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis are:- Complexity (spatial network analysis, scaling and explanatory mechanisms)
- Design and visualisation (GIS and dataVis, 3D models, virtual cities, virtual and augmented realities)
- Geo-demographics
- ICT in society
- Simulation (agent-based models, spatial models, land use transportation models)
- Bartlett Development Planning Unit (DPU)
Development Planning Unit MPhil/PhD
The main areas of research within the Development Planning Unit are:- Urban Transformations
- Environmental Justice, Urbanisation and Resilience
- Diversity, Social Complexity and Planned Intervention
- State and Market Governance and Policy
- Bartlett School of Architecture (BSA)
Architectural Design MPhil/PhD
The Design route encourages the development of architectural research through the combination of designing and writing. On this route, you will typically be required to present a thesis consisting of a project and a text that share a research theme and a productive relationship. The project may be drawn, filmed, built, or make use of whatever media is appropriate.
Architectural and Urban History and Theory MPhil/PhD
The Urban History and Theory route is intended to allow you to conduct an exhaustive, original and creative piece of research into an area of your own selection and definition. The range of research topics undertaken is broad, but most explore the history and theory of architecture and cities between 1800 and the present day.
Architectural Space and Computation MPhil/PhD
The Space and Computation route normally requires students to use space syntax theories and methods to study the effects of spatial design on aspects of social, organisational and economic performance of buildings and urban areas; or to apply technology to research into the built environment, bringing innovative computational analytical methods to the heart of the design process.
Architecture and Digital Theory MPhil/PhD
The Digital Theory route is intended to allow you to produce original research in areas related to computational tools applied to design, regardless of scale, historical timeframe, or methodological approach.
Architectural Practice MPhil/PhD
This route involves a combination of designing and writing about applied ‘real-world’ projects that candidates are engaged upon through their own professional practice. The thesis will consist of design projects and an interrelated text that share a research theme, with the key requirement being that it needs to be about projects which are already built or at some stage in the process of being built.
- Bartlett School of Planning
Research within the Bartlett School of Planning ranges from understanding the fundamentals of urban form, complexity, society and development, to critiquing the processes of planning, governance, regeneration and investment, and analysing the outcomes from planning as they affect urban quality, culture, sustainability and mobility.
- Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction (BSSC)
Sustainable Construction MPhil/PhD
The main areas of research within the Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction are:
- Infrastructure economics, infrastructure finance and management
- Construction economics
- Urban and housing economics
- Real estate finance
- Project management, including innovation, learning, risk management, leadership, marketing, financing, project-based enterprises
- UCL Energy Institute
UCL Energy Institute MPhil/PhD
The UCL Energy Institute researches energy demand and energy systems, and their relationships with the following:
- Built environment
- Economics
- Engineering
- Health
- Human dimensions
- Policy
- Resources
- Transport
- UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering (IEDE)
Environmental Design and Engineering MPhil/PhD
The main areas of research within the UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering are:
- Energy use in buildings
- Building stock modelling
- Healthy buildings
- Environmental policy
- Environmental performance
- Light and lighting
- Facility management
- Workplace innovation
- UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage (ISH)
Sustainable Heritage MPhil/PhD
Students with the ISH will work with people and partners that are engaged with real-world heritage problems and issues, and will conduct research that has the potential to command a global audience and influence.
- Institute for Sustainable Resources (ISR)
Sustainable Resources MPhil/PhD
Students work on research projects in the area of sustainable resource use alongside experienced researchers in a dynamic, multidisciplinary environment.
- Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP)
There are three core research themes within the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity:
- Making a living (the conceptualisation and improvement of livelihoods)
- The change that needs to happen (social innovation as a means of building new social, economic and political institutions)
- Making the future (mechanisms and capacities for turning science and technology innovations towards key social challenges)
- UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP)
Innovation and Public Policy MPhil/PhD
An interdisciplinary doctoral research programme bringing together economists, philosophers, political scientists, designers, architects, anthropologists, engineers and natural scientists to connect theories of innovation to new thinking about public value creation. IIPP is a UCL institute providing radical thinking about public policy driven by public purpose.
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The Bartlett Doctoral Networks
The Bartlett Doctoral Networks have been set up to foster contact and collaboration between doctoral students and staff, on cross-cutting themes relating to the built environment.
Each aims to promote awareness of who’s who, doing what and where, within the faculty; fostering information exchange, social support and research collaboration; and encouraging collaboration between doctoral students and staff in the Bartlett, elsewhere in UCL and beyond.The networks are generally led by doctoral researchers, but welcome active participation by both doctoral researchers and staff. Some have more emphasis on research itself; other have a broader social remit.
- Find out more about our doctoral networks
The Bartlett Informality Network*
The Bartlett Heartland, Hinterland and Resource Nexus Network
The Bartlett Future Cities Network
The Bartlett Film+Place+Architecture Network*
*currently inactive
- To find out about the following, please contact the relevant coordinator
Sensing Environments (Carrie Behar / Panos Mavros / Alexandra Gomes)
Future Cities (Athanasios Kourniotis)
Photography Network (Alexandra Gomes / Juliana Martins / Sonia Freire)
Transport (Alireza Kolahi)
Postgraduate teaching assistants
The Bartlett Faculty of The Built Environment is committed to offering teaching assistant experience through a postgraduate teaching assistant (PGTA) programme.
Please see the UCL Postgraduate Teaching Assistant Hub for information on teaching opportunities, policies and procedure, resources, case studies and more to help UCL Postgraduate Teaching Assistants (PGTAs) to develop their teaching at UCL.