Microcredential ekomex Introduction to Interpretive Research

This course will give participants an introduction to interpretive research approaches and provide them with the skills to conduct and evaluate interpretive research.

What Is This Course About?
Interpretivist research is aimed at uncovering how social actors understand and experience the world that surrounds them.  Understanding how social actors perceive the world is important, because humans’ interpretation of the world and situations shapes their actions. This five-day online course will give participants an introduction to interpretive research approaches and provide them with the skills to formulate interpretive research questions and research designs as well as evaluating interpretive research. We will cover topics such as foundations of interpretive approaches, developing research questions, quality standards as well as methods for generating and analyzing data.

Learning Goals

• Formulate interpretive research questions
• Demonstrate knowledge on practical, ethical, and analytical concerns related to planning, doing, and presenting interpretive research
• Account for, apply and critically assess different means of data generation in interpretive research
• Account for, apply and critically assess different means of analysing data generated in interpretive research
• Discuss and critically assess strengths and weaknesses of different interpretive approaches

Assignments for the Course
Participants will do exercises and small assignments during the course both in groups and individually. The assignments/exercises include conducting observations, preparing an interview guide, and working with condensation and analysis of text material. There will also be a final written exam which will be graded (pass/fail).

Schedule

• Monday
  09:30-11.00 – Online lecture and welcome
  11:15-12:15 – Small group work
  13:15-14:15 – Live online session on zoom
  14:30-15:30 – Office hour on zoom

• Tuesday
  09:30-11.00 – Online session and lecture
  11:15-12:15 – Small group work
  13:15-14:30 – Individual exercise
  14:30-15:30 – Office hour on zoom

• Wednesday
  09:30-11.00 – Online session and lecture
  11:15-12:15 – Individual exercise
  13:15-14:15 – Small group work
  14:30-15:30 – Office hour on zoom

• Thursday
  09:30-11.00 – Online session and lecture
  11:15-12:15 – small group work
  13:15-14:15 – Individual exercise
  14:30-15:30 – Office hour on zoom

• Friday
  09:30-11.00 – Online session and lecture
  11:15-12:15 –  Small group work
  13:15-14:15 – Individual exercise and office hour
  14:30-15:30 – Online session

Recommended Readings for the Course

• Yanow, Dvora, 2014: “Thinking interpretively: philosophical presuppositions and the human sciences”, 5-26 in: (ed. Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea) Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Method and the Interpretive Turn, New York: M.E. Sharpe
• Schwartz-Shea, P 2014: “Judging Quality. Evaluative Criteria and Epistemic Communities”, pp. 120-146 in : (ed. Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea) Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Method and the Interpretive Turn, New York: M.E. Sharpe
• Schatz, E. (2009). Political ethnography: what immersion contributes to the study of power. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Who Is Your Instructor?
Amalie Trangbæk is an assistant professor at Department of Political Science, Aarhus University. She specializes in interpretive methods including ethnography, where she has conducted shadowing and participant observation, and interviews, where she specializes in elite interviewing. She has previously taught in qualitative methods.
X: @AmalieTrangbaek

Mathilde Cecchini is an associate professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Southern Denmark. She specializes in interpretive research methods including ethnography, interpretive interviewing, discourse analysis and narrative analysis. She has taught PhD courses on these topics at her home institution and at the MethodsNet summer school.
X: @MathiCecchini