Call for Applications: Joint PhD Summer School by EURA and ECPR

   
Organisers: Dubravka Jurlina Alibegovic (The Institute of Economics, Zagreb) and Jan Erling Klausen (University of Oslo)

Topic:             “Cities as Political Arenas: Governing Urban Change through Collaboration and Innovation”      
Cities face many of today’s key challenges, such as climate change, migration, social inequalities, housing affordability, and tourism pressures. These challenges materialise very concretely in urban neighbourhoods and are addressed through local policies, planning decisions, and new forms of collaboration. The Summer School intends to provide doctoral students with an opportunity to present and discuss research on how cities are governed and how local actors respond to such pressures.
We are looking forward to receiving contributions that explore urban governance arrangements, collaborative and experimental practices, and specific local responses to shared problems, including comparisons within or between countries. Participants will receive methodological guidance from experienced scholars, as well as advice from journal editors on crafting publishable articles and navigating the review process in leading international journals.

Location:       The Institute of Economics, Zagreb, Croatia
Duration:      September 14^th to 17^th, 2026
Faculty members: Hubert Heinelt, Filipe Teles, Michael Haus, Jan Erling Klausen, Paweł Swianiewicz, Björn Egner

Organisational and financial details: Summer School will take place at The Institute of Economics, Zagreb. Participants’ accommodation will be organized at the “Cvjetno naselje” student dormitory, Zagreb Student Centre, University of Zagreb. Participation in the Summer School-including accommodation and up to two dinners-is free of charge for PhD students who are affiliated with a member institution of the European Urban Research Association (EURA).
 
A registration fee of €150,00 applies to participants who are not members of the European Urban Research Association (EURA). This fee does not have to be paid by individual EURA members either. Information on how to become an individual member of EURA and how much the membership fee costs can be found on the following website: https://eura.org/membership/become-member/
Participants have to cover their travel expenses themselves.

Deadline for the submission of applications from PhD students and procedure for the selection of participating PhD students: Interested PhD students must submit an abstract (of up to 300 words) of the paper to be presented at the summer school and discussed by the participants by 31 March 2026 at the latest. The paper’s subject must fit the summer school’ topic (see above). The abstract, along with the details of the PhD supervisor(s), should be sent by email to the organisers at djurlina@eizg.hr and j.e.klausen@stv.uio.no. Please include ‘Summer School 2026’ in the subject line.
 

The organisers of the summer school will select the papers to be presented at the summer school by the end of April 2026. The main selection criteria are the scientific quality of the papers and their thematic alignment with the summer school’ topic, which must be demonstrated in the submitted abstract.

Written versions of the selected papers have to be submitted by email to the organisers of the summer school no later than 31 July 2026. All submitted papers will be made available to participants electronically in early August 2026.