Sem (MA/MA-EU) Methodology of the Social Sciences: Qualitative methods
Instructors: Dr. Friedrich PlankShortname: Sem Methodology
Course Type: Seminar
Requirements / organisational issues
- MA European Studies (Europamaster) (Modul 5 Advanced Political Science and Study Project: Politics in Europe)Anwesenheitspflicht
Note: Participation in the session on 22 June is mandatory to pass the seminar.Recommended reading list
George, A. and Bennett, A., 2005. Case studies and theory development in the social sciences. Cambridge: MIT Press.Gerring, J., 2007. Case study research?: principles and practices. New York: Cambridge University Press.
King, G., Keohane, R.O., and Verba, S., 1994. Designing social inquiry?: scientific inference in qualitative research. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Contents
In this seminar, we will engage with qualitative methods of political science and their application in different research fields of International Relations and European Studies.In the first part of the seminar, we will focus on more general epistemological prerequisites for doing qualitative research and how to engage in academic work, before we deal specifically with case studies, comparative analyses, process tracing, structured-focused comparison, as well as discourse analysis. Moreover, we will focus on methods of systematic data acquisition and data evaluation including data such as expert interviews, official documents, media data, speech acts, aggregated data etc. Especially for the data evaluation, we will engage with qualitative data coding introducing and using the software MaxQDA. Hence, the seminar offers the opportunity to learn of how to do qualitative methods in practice and with reference to your own research interests.
Note: Participation in the session on 22 June is mandatory to pass the seminar.
Dates
| Date (Day of the week) | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 04/13/2026 (Monday) | 16:15 - 17:45 | 02 607 Seminarraum 1137 - Georg-Forster-Gebäude (Sowi) |
| 04/20/2026 (Monday) | 16:15 - 17:45 | 02 607 Seminarraum 1137 - Georg-Forster-Gebäude (Sowi) |
| 04/27/2026 (Monday) | 16:15 - 17:45 | 02 607 Seminarraum 1137 - Georg-Forster-Gebäude (Sowi) |
| 05/04/2026 (Monday) | 16:15 - 17:45 | 02 607 Seminarraum 1137 - Georg-Forster-Gebäude (Sowi) |
| 05/11/2026 (Monday) | 16:15 - 17:45 | 02 607 Seminarraum 1137 - Georg-Forster-Gebäude (Sowi) |
| 05/18/2026 (Monday) | 16:15 - 17:45 | 02 607 Seminarraum 1137 - Georg-Forster-Gebäude (Sowi) |
| 06/01/2026 (Monday) | 16:15 - 17:45 | 02 607 Seminarraum 1137 - Georg-Forster-Gebäude (Sowi) |
| 06/08/2026 (Monday) | 16:15 - 17:45 | 02 607 Seminarraum 1137 - Georg-Forster-Gebäude (Sowi) |
| 06/15/2026 (Monday) | 16:15 - 17:45 | 02 607 Seminarraum 1137 - Georg-Forster-Gebäude (Sowi) |
| 06/22/2026 (Monday) | 16:15 - 19:45 | 01 711 PC-Pool 1137 - Georg-Forster-Gebäude (Sowi) |
| 06/29/2026 (Monday) | 16:15 - 17:45 | 02 607 Seminarraum 1137 - Georg-Forster-Gebäude (Sowi) |
| 07/06/2026 (Monday) | 16:15 - 17:45 | 02 607 Seminarraum 1137 - Georg-Forster-Gebäude (Sowi) |