210020 UE BAK4: Empirical research using qualitative methods (2024S)

This seminar is an introduction to qualitative research with a topical focus on environmental politics. It will give students a chance to explore how political scientists can study various domains of environmental politics, such as international negotiations, local resource management, science-policy interactions, and civil society engagement.

At the end of the seminar, students will have gained knowledge on a range of qualitative methods and their empirical applications. Students will understand why and how to use qualitative methods for empirical research and critically assess literature in light of the applied methods. They will have developed skills to formulate research questions and hypotheses from their preferred topics and continuously worked on their research designs over the time of the course. The students will have conducted small-scale empirical research, and written a paper to answer their research questions by the end of the class. Students will also have learned to reflect on their own positioning in the intersection between politics and research.

This seminar benefits from the ongoing research of the MARIPOLDATA ERC research project, which studies the international process around a new UN treaty for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ).