Research Design in Political Economy

The course is meant to support students indesigning and completing the PhD manuscript. The course focuses on students’ research works by offering each student the opportunity to present, discuss, and obtain feedback on individual parts of their theses. Besides improving reciprocal knowledge and potential networking, the research design course aims at discussing, with reference to the specific projects, the main steps in the development of a research design: from the selection of the central research questions, to their theoretical framing, the case selection, the choice of the empirical methods of investigation, the challenges of field work, and the analysis and presentation of the results.  Involving participants at different stages of their academic experiences, the seminar also offers the opportunity to develop PhD’s skills in discussing and constructively contributing to each other research, both during the formal sessions and in successive informal meetings.

The seminar has a crash course format and is organized into three full-day meeting according to the schedule provided below. 45 minutes will be assigned to each student to present ongoing thesis work, with 15 minutes of presentation, 10 minutes for the discussants and remaining time for Q&A with the audience. Each student will be assigned at least one discussant but all participants are expected to provide comments and feedbacks. Further details about the order of students’ presentations will be provided by the instructor via email by the end of March 2024.

Program:

Session N. 1 

(15/4/2024, h. 10-13 and h. 14-18)

Session N. 2 

(16/4/2024, h. 9-12 and h. 15-18)

Session N. 3 

(17/4/2024, h. 10-13 and h. 14-18)