Come do a PhD with us at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design as part of the Re:Structure project. You’ll work within an awesome team and broad network of people pushing the boundaries of public service design in Norway. That said, it’s our ambition to do research a little differently. For one, we are committed to holding ourselves accountable for modeling the kind of future that we want. Have you heard of prefigurative politics? Prefigurative politics (coined by Carl Boggs) comes from spaces of activism and movement building. It reflects the aspiration of building the society we collectively want “within the shell of the old” by living out the social structures the group desires for the future. This is what we are attempting through our research. To us, this means working to gain political traction for our work without reinforcing problematic framings or labels like “youth criminals” that have system currency right now. It means working with youth co-researchers in ways that don’t reinforce them as outsiders but rather recognize their unique knowledge that the system needs. It means struggling with municipal red tape to find sustainable ways to pay youth for their time and contributions to the research. It means staying with difficulties so that we can learn from the things that feel (almost) impossible amid the current ways of working. We believe that another world is possible, but only if we embody it together today. We don’t see our research as disconnected from the systems we are trying to change, but rather part of their ongoing evolution. In service of this idea, we are attempting to reinvigorate the old research tradition of Scandinavian participatory design (that started in the 1970s with a focus on democratizing workplaces). By combining participatory design with service and systemic design, we are attempting to support the democratization the public service systems through our research practices. This means doing research that’s not just driven by those in academia but by collective inquiry with a broad spectrum of co-researchers, including youth, municipal service providers, community organizers, politicians and so on. This also means doing active experimentation around the changes that we seek, not simply writing up learnings in research papers (although we value and do that too!). If this sounds interesting to you, please consider applying. We’re very excited about this evolving research and getting a new team member on board to learn together with us. The position starts September 2026 and applications are due *February 23rd*. For more information on the position, check out the job posting: https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/worldwide/south-korea/news/phd-research-fellowship-critical-design-public-service-systems-youth