This research project investigates the ways in which contemporary architecture brings non-human animals into human societies and economies, transforming them and ourselves in the process. The research responds to urgent environmental challenges that demand the reassessment and reconfiguration of our relationship to the non-human animal and our own animality, as well as to our conception of nature and architecture’s role in its care. It responds, too, to the emergence of transdisciplinary fields—critical animal geographies, anthrozoology, pet studies—that study those challenges and with which architecture is yet to engage. The project counters the tendency to consider architecture and urban design as exclusively human concerns. The candidate will identify and analyse significant and exemplary buildings in which real animals are kept for human purposes such as conservation, research, sport, recreation, or farming. They will select an area of focus, for example, the zoo, vivarium, animal shelter, or farm building, and investigate historic, current and potential approaches to its architecture. The study will enable a sharper theorising of interspecies relationships and reveal domestication and captivity as essentially architectural processes.

The School of Architecture at the University of Queensland (Brisbane, Australia) offers a PhD scholarship for a motivated student to contribute to research being undertaken by Professor Sandra Kaji-O’Grady. Candidates with a background in Architecture, Animal-Studies or Anthrozoology, are strongly encouraged to apply. The current RTP Stipend rate is AUD $27,596 per annum (2019 rate, indexed annually) tax-free for three years with the possibility of two 6-month extensions in approved circumstances.

Top-up scholarships and international student fee-waivers are also available to exceptional candidates.