Methodologies for the Social Sciences I

written and oral

Students are expected to be active participants in the seminar. Reading requirements are to be fulfilled before the beginning of class. All students are expected to prepare comments and participate in the discussion. In the second part, two parallel workshops will be organised and researchers will be asked to present their own specific research designs and work in progress during chosen sessions. 

first year PhD

 The aim of this course is to discuss main approaches to political science and sociology and related methodological choices. We will go through the principal steps in designing research, formulating research questions and hypotheses and selecting methods for data collection. In this sense, it aims at introducing all main steps that first year students need to take to design their research project.  

Taking into account the diverse national and disciplinary background of first year research, the seminar attempts to develop some common knowledge, without losing the richness of plurality. The seminar as a whole, as well as the individual sessions, aim at critically contrasting the advantages as well as problems of the various strategies in the construction of scientific knowledge. 

Della Porta D, Keating M, eds. 2014, Approaches and Methodologies in the Social Sciences: A Pluralist Perspective. Cambridge University Press;