PhD Candidate in Housing provision as enjoyment (f/m) - Ref: 26-27

The Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) calls for PhD applicants in:

Housing provision as enjoyment (f/m)

• Ref : 26-27
• 36 month fixed-term working contract at LISER (with a possible one-year extension)
• Full-time, 40 hours/week
• Department: Urban Development and Mobility
• Work location: Belval (Luxembourg)
• Deadline to submit applications: September 18th, 2026 at midnight CET

The world faces a convergence of crises that are transforming the conditions for human development. Climate instability, ecosystem degradation, and the overuse of natural resources have reached critical levels, while social inequality, political fragmentation, and technological disruption are reshaping societies. Traditional notions of economic competitiveness, centred on growth and productivity, are being redefined to include social resilience, inclusiveness, and ecological integrity. Responding to this ‘polycrisis’ requires new pathways that reconcile prosperity with planetary and social limits. Luxembourg offers a particularly illustrative example of these tensions. The country enjoys one of the highest income levels globally and a dynamic financial and business environment that sustains its reputation for economic success. Yet this prosperity depends strongly on cross-border commuting, which creates mobility challenges and environmental stress. Escalating housing prices have made access to affordable living increasingly difficult, displacing a significant share of the workforce beyond national borders. The reliance on imported energy leaves households and firms vulnerable to external shocks. Although Luxembourg’s welfare model and social dialogue remain robust, they are under pressure from rising costs of living, widening inequalities, and growing demands on public services. Environmentally, Luxembourg’s footprint per inhabitant ranks among the largest worldwide, driven by high consumption and land-use pressures that push the country beyond sustainable limits. Meeting these intertwined challenges calls for coordinated transformations that bridge sectors, disciplines, and scales. Economic and social progress must be reframed within the concept of a Safe Operating Space—an area in which human well-being is achieved without breaching environmental boundaries. The objective is to steer innovation, governance, and everyday practices toward forms of competitiveness that are compatible with sustainability, rather than in conflict with it.

The Doctoral Training Unit (DTU) C-SOS (Competitiveness within a Safe Operating Space) is designed to cultivate researchers capable of analysing and fostering such transformations. It brings together an interdisciplinary consortium to train 12 PhD candidates in the assessment and design of inclusive and sustainable development trajectories. The programme equips them with conceptual and methodological tools to connect environmental sustainability, social well-being, and economic dynamics into integrated frameworks for decision-making. Its ambition is to inform socio-economic policies, encourage responsible industrial and technological innovation, and contribute to more equitable and resilient societies. Luxembourg provides an ideal environment for this initiative, combining strong expertise in sustainability science and policy analysis. The DTU is a collaboration between researchers at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), the University of Luxembourg (UL) and the Urban Development and Mobility Department at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER). The consortium also includes the National Statistics Office (STATEC). In this DTU, 12 scientists will train 12 PhD students over six years, each obtaining a PhD from UL’s doctoral schools.

Your role

This call is to contribute to this DTU through the development of a PhD project on housing provision as enjoyment in the context of the current housing unaffordability crisis. While economic causes are widely researched, less is known of the role played by enjoyment, desire and drive in the development of housing unaffordability. In housing, it is crucial to scrutinize forms of individualistic enjoyment, such as the control over land exercised by landowners, the production of value by property developers, and the domination landlords exercise over tenants. It is also urgent to identify and amplify more collective forms of enjoyment in housing provision, such as the investments driving the development of social housing, cooperative housing or community land trusts – forms of enjoyment that foreground the use value of ‘home’ and collective libidinal investments in housing provision.

To map these forms of individualistic and collective enjoyment, and to uncover how they become socially accepted part of the ‘new normal’ of housing systems, the project can mobilise, among others: historical analysis of elite discourses and legal texts to identify shifts in the social acceptability of certain forms of individualistic or collective housing-related enjoyment; biographical or life-course interviews with property actors centring on the drivers of their actions; analysis of cultural production (literature, art, music, film, etc.), social media discourse or AI-generated text.

Your profile

• You should have (or expect to achieve) a Masters degree in geography, sociology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, history or other relevant social science disciplines ;
• Excellent verbal communication and academic writing skills in English ;
• Enthusiasm for theory, research and critical thinking.

LISER particularly encourages female applicants to apply

We offer

• An exciting multi-disciplinary and international research environment with ample opportunities to exchange with scholars from related disciplines at both LISER and the University of Luxembourg;
• A highly competitive remuneration for a full-time PhD position according to the Collective Bargaining Agreement in force and an employment contract at LISER for a period of maximum 4 consecutive years (3+1 years);
• A package of mentoring, training and career development as well as access to a wide range of courses and seminars, including language courses, offered by LISER and the University of Luxembourg;
• Flexibility in the organisation of the working hours and the possibility of teleworking;
• 32.5 days of annual leave for a full-time contract.

Doctoral candidates are encouraged to actively engage in disciplinary, interdisciplinary as well as transferable skills trainings and to develop their scientific profile and network through participation in high-level international conferences. 

The yearly gross salary for full-time employment is as follows:

1st year – 51’690,72 euros

2nd year – 54’212,28 euros

3rd year – 56’733,72 euros

Application process

Please submit your complete application via https://jobs.liser.lu/jobs including:

• a detailed CV;
• a cover letter outlining your interest, motivation and suitability for the PhD research theme, as well as how you foresee developing a theoretically-informed project in this area ;
• a relevant written document (e.g. a working paper, your MA/MSc thesis, a seminar paper) ;
• copy of relevant diplomas and transcripts ;
• 2 reference letters from academic referees (to be uploaded with your online application or sent separately to recruitment@liser.lu).

Deadline for applications: September 18th, 2026 at midnight CET.

For any content related question, please contact Dr Antoine PACCOUD at antoine.paccoud@liser.lu

For administrative and recruitment matters, please contact Mrs. Vanya KIROVA at recruitment@liser.lu

Why LISER?

LISER is a publicly funded research institute located in Luxembourg and dedicated to applied empirical research in economic, social and spatial sciences. The Institute attracts top researchers from all over the world and high-level student training is a vibrant part of the Institute’s activities. LISER staff consists of approx. 200 employees, about 60% of the staff being researchers; mainly from the fields of economics, geography and sociology. The vision of the institute is to be a socio-economic research institute internationally recognised, focused on scientific excellence and societal impact, able to contribute through multi-disciplinary and intersectoral research, in an active and inclusive way to a sustainable and inclusive society at national and international level.

The institute is located on the new Belval campus in the south of Luxembourg (Cité des Sciences, Luxembourg), which hosts the University of Luxembourg and a substantial part of the country’s publicly funded research facilities, i.e. LISER, the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) cross-national data centre, the Luxembourg institutes of Health (LIH) and of Science and Technology (LIST). Information on research in Luxembourg is accessible via the national EURAXESS platform.

LISER is an Equal Opportunity Employer