Relational Knowledge Production in Architectural Design Doctorate at Istanbul Technical University

Architectural design doctoral education increasingly incorporates practice-based research, raising questions about which forms of knowledge become academically visible and recognized. In the Turkish context, the epistemic structures through which doctoral knowledge in architectural design gains academic recognition remain insufficiently understood. Prior bibliometric studies in architectural education have largely mapped trend topics. However, they have not examined how these themes define different fields of recognition. This study addresses this gap through keyword co-occurrence network analysis and thematic coding of 190 doctoral dissertation abstracts produced at Istanbul Technical University (ITU), representing 41.63% of the architectural design doctoral corpus in Türkiye. Drawing on Bourdieu's theory of symbolic capital, the study interprets which research themes acquire visibility and recognition within the academic field. The findings reveal that doctoral knowledge production does not expand through a linear accumulation of research themes. Instead, it operates as a relational network of interconnected domains. The analysis identifies five major epistemic domains: Theory and Criticism, Education-Practice-Reproduction, Spatial Objects and Semantics, Computation and Representation, and Design Epistemology. These domains show differing centrality and connectivity, pointing to unsteady patterns of academic recognition. The study reframes knowledge production as relational rather than cumulative. This perspective offers an analytical lens for evaluating epistemic legitimacy in doctoral education and supports comparative and institutional self-reflection across architectural doctoral programs internationally.