Amin Sharq is a PhD candidate in Social Sciences (Urban Studies) at the University of Basel, Switzerland. His research sits at the intersection of digital infrastructure studies, everyday urban life, and migration.

His doctoral project examines how highly standardized digital infrastructures in advanced cities continue to function despite significant population diversity. Focusing on the experiences of migrants as well as older adults and other vulnerable groups in Zurich, one of Europe’s leading smart cities, the research introduces the concept of “Adaptive Infrastructural Labour”. This concept captures the often-invisible temporal, cognitive, social, and emotional efforts that users must undertake to access public services and interact with digital systems not designed for their diverse lived realities. The project demonstrates how these efforts enable functional access while simultaneously constraining users’ autonomy and producing unequal forms of urban belonging.

Prior to his PhD, Amin has built a diverse professional background in service design and participatory research. He has led numerous projects on immigrant integration, second-generation identity, culturally responsive design, and age-friendly cities in Switzerland, Canada, and Iran. This interdisciplinary foundation, spanning industrial design, Islamic urban design, and architecture, brings a distinctive practical, spatial, and socially engaged perspective to his urban research.

• Digital infrastructures and smart cities

• Everyday urbanism and digital inequality

• Migration, integration, and urban belonging

• Participatory design, architecture, and service design

• Switzerland
• Europe
• Middle East (particularly Iran)