Are you interested in qualitative or interpretive methods? Going to APSA this week in DC? Be sure to join us at the annual Methods Café!
The café is designed for everyone from graduate students to full professors who use interpretive and/or qualitative research methods to have one-on-one & small group conversations with methods specialists as well as book publishers, journal editors, and representatives from funding agencies familiar w/ these methods.
It is not a panel or roundtable session. Instead, it’s an informal setting with multiple tables and places to sit. Each table has a placard with the method being discussed, e.g. “Interviewing,” and one or two specialists in that method sitting at the table.
Visitors are invited to arrive at any point, visit any table they like, and stay as long as they like. A visitor might approach a table, sit down, & ask the specialist(s) to talk about how they use their chosen method. If a conversation is already under way, others can join in or just sit and listen. No question is “too elementary”—it’s OK to ask anything about that method, at any level!
Questions might include:
“What is ______ method?”
“I’m in the midst of analyzing my data and I’ve run into [describes a specific problem], how should I handle it?" “One of my committee members doesn’t believe that interpretive methods are valid. How can I respond to this challenge?”
First initiated by Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea in 2006, the Methods Café has been a successful and well-attended part of APSA for 12 years.
This year we are thrilled to welcome the following methods specialists:
Archives & Historical Analysis: Amel F. Ahmed, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Emily Hauptmann, Western Michigan University
Case Studies: Kendra L. Koivu, University of New Mexico; Annika M. Hinze, Fordham University
Discourse Analysis: Lisa Wedeen, University of Chicago
Ethics & the IRB: Peregrine Schwartz-Shea, University of Utah; Sarah E. Parkinson, Johns Hopkins University
Publishing: Michael Bernhard, University of Florida; Dan O'Neill, University of Florida; Aaron Javsicas, Temple University Press
Political Ethnography: Robin L. Turner, Butler University; Erica S. Simmons, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Interviewing: James M. Curry, University of Utah
Funding: Michael L. Miller, Social Science Research Council
Critical Approaches to Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Colonialism: Dara Z. Strolovitch, Princeton University; Nadia E. Brown, Purdue University
Teaching Methods: Cecelia Lynch, University of California, Irvine; Elisabeth Jean Wood, Yale University
Research Design: Dvora Yanow, Wageningen University
Public Engagement and Action Amy Cabrera Rasmussen, California State University, Long Beach
The café this year is generously sponsored by Cambridge University Press Methods for Social Inquiry & Strategies for Social Inquiry Series; SAGE / CQ Politics Publications; and Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods. Visit their respective tables at the café to learn more about their series & support for interpretive methods.
The café is organized by Samantha Majic, John Jay College, CUNY, and Timothy Pachirat, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
I have the privilege of being the graduate student host, so I hope to see you all there: Friday, August 30, 2:00 – 3:30 PM, Marriott Wardman Park, Washington 4 (lower level). Reach me with any questions via email: estone(at)gradcenter(dot)cuny(dot)edu or on Twitter: @BStone_ABD
2019 APSA Methods Café Flyer.pdf
