Research Design in cultural sociology

In this intensive 20-hour long seminar, doctoral students enrolled in the first three years of the PhD in Political Science and Sociology, working in the field of cultural studies and the sociology of culture, join forces with PhD students in political communication and comparative politics to present their work before an audience of professors, post-doctoral researchers, and peers. Besides improving reciprocal knowledge and fostering networking, the research design course aims at discussing, with reference to each project, the main steps in the development of a research design, from the selection of the key research questions to their theoretical framing, the case selection, the choice of the empirical methods of investigation, the challenges of fieldwork, and the analysis and presentation of the results. Involving participants at different stages of advancement of the academic experience, the seminar also provide students with the opportunity to develop their skills by making a critical contribution to each other research, both during the sessions and in successive informal sessions that are in part already ongoing and that the seminar intends to stimulate further. Students are allocated approximately an hour each to present their work, receive in-depth feedback from two respondents, and open up the discussion to the remaining seminar participants.