Draft program of the Joint PhD Summer School “Cities as Political Arenas: Governing Urban Change through Collaboration and Innovation”

We are pleased to announce the draft program of the Joint PhD Summer School, which the European Urban Research Association (EURA) and the Standing Group on Local Government and Politics of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) are organizing in cooperation with the Institute of Economics, Zagreb and the University of Oslo. The topic of the summer school is “Cities as Political Arenas: Governing Urban Change through Collaboration and Innovation” and it will be held 14-17 September 2026 at the Institute of Economics, Zagreb. The draft program is available here.
 
! The deadline for submitting applications is 31 March 2026 !

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
Organisers: Dubravka Jurlina Alibegovic (The Institute of Economics, Zagreb) and Jan Erling Klausen (University of Oslo)
Faculty members: Hubert Heinelt, Filipe Teles, Michael Haus, Jan Erling Klausen, Paweł Swianiewicz, Björn Egner

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.