Postdoctoral opportunity: Adaptive reuse of buildings, University of Bologna, Italy

The call for applicants for a two year postdoctoral fellowship on adaptive reuse of buildings, based at the University of Bologna, is open from now until the 12th December. Please share widely!

The researcher will contribute to the work package on the history of throwaway culture, within a multidisciplinary project on the cultural and ethical foundations of sustainability in the built environment. The project situates current practices of adaptive reuse within longer histories of urban transformation and the shifting values attached to preservation and care. Bridging historical and ethnographic approaches, the research will trace the emergence and persistence of demolition and replacement as cultural practices, exploring their ethical, material, and institutional dimensions. Combining archival research with oral histories and interviews, particularly with architects, planners, and residents, the researcher will examine how ideas of repair, reuse, and obsolescence have evolved, and how past notions of progress, modernity, and waste continue to shape contemporary urban redevelopment in Italy, Germany, and/or Switzerland.