Seminars by guest professors

The ViDSS strengthens education and international networking of doctoral candidates by organising seminars by international scholars from outside the University of Vienna. The seminars are part of the regular course programme offered in the doctoral programme in Social Sciences.

 Summer semester of 2024

“Illiberalism and party system changes in Europe”
Theory seminar in the doctoral programme in Social Sciences
6 March–19 June 2024

Elections in liberal democracies occur through and by parties. For that single reason, anyone interested in studying democratic behaviour must know something about political parties, examine the reasons why individuals prefer one party over another, and analyse the relationship between parties and citizens. The success or failures of the democratic process in no small part depend on these two actors. This seminar introduces students to concepts and empirical studies that illuminate the relationship between citizens and parties: the nature and sources of individuals’ democratic orientations; how political parties behave and structure the options for individuals; and how the interplay between the two may contribute to, or hinder, good representation and accountability. Ultimately, these two levels – mass and elite behaviour – substantially shape the quality of political representation, affect the accountability of political elites to citizens – and thus heavily influence whether liberal democracies are successful. Accordingly, the central goals of the seminar are twofold. First, they provide a detailed overview of the concepts used to study the main actors in democracies: individuals and parties. Second, we will examine how political scientists study the dialogue between parties and voters – when it may succeed, when it may fail, and what consequences follow from the interaction.

For more information please visit the course directory.

“Publication Strategies in the Social Sciences”
Workshop for doctoral candidates and early postdoctoral researchers in the social sciences
6 May 2024, 13:00-15:00
Conference Room of the Faculty of Social Sciences (Room C628A) Neues Institutsgebäude (NIG), Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Vienna, 6th floor, staircase III

More information

Robert Rohrschneider

Worcester Professor of International Politics at the University of Kansas

Fulbright – University of Vienna Visiting Professor of Social Sciences at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Government

Contact
roro@ku.edu
kups.ku.edu


“Integrating qualitative and quantitative textual analysis”
Methods seminar in the doctoral programme in Social Sciences
15 March–31 May 2024

In the age of digital media, textual data rapidly exceeds what can be confidently captured by means of traditional qualitative analysis. While numerous quantitative techniques exist for inductively extracting qualitative patterns from textual big data, they are difficult to target onto specific patterns of interest, and face serious robustness issues. Inversely, many qualitative approaches to digital data face challenges with regard to the saturation and generalisability of findings. Textual researchers therefore need novel strategies for integrating qualitative and quantitative research methods, ensuring that quantitative procedures remain valid and that qualitative procedures capture the variability of the material. In this class, we will examine contemporary research practices in qualitative-quantitative mixed methods textual research, identifying key avenues for mobilising one strategy to add value to the other. The class takes an inclusive approach to textual research methodologies, spanning discourse analytic, grounded, content analytic as well as inductive and deductive computational approaches to the study of textual meaning. Discussing critical limitations and biases in the standalone application of different textual research methods, we will investigate how qualitative-quantitative method integration can help raise validity in crossculturally and cross-lingually comparative research and enhance confidence in both manual and algorithmic inductive research.

For more information please visit the course directory.

Christian Baden

Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and Journalism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Paul Lazarsfeld Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Vienna, Department of Communication

Contact
scholars.huji.ac.il


“Feeling feminist methodologies: Affect, emotions and cultivating ways of knowing”
Methods seminar in the doctoral programme in Social Sciences
15–19 April 2024

This course explores the myriad methodological debates and advances in feminist methodologies that have affective sensibilities, with a keen attention to how emotions and affects have been addressed or neglected in research, and how bringing feminist methodologies attuned to affect and emotions challenges conventional understandings of rationality and power. While there are competing definitions of affect and emotion, we will begin from the premise that while important, these debates can sometimes obscure rather than illuminate the field. Thinking methodologically with both affect and emotion will provide a more expansive understanding of their sociality. Feminist inquiry has been transformed as a result of its engagement with intersectionality and its emphasis on how interlocking forms of oppression grounded in race, class, disability and gender structure societies. These axes of identity are also highly emotional and affective, such that feelings about racial others have important effects, as do feelings about disability. A methodological approach to feminist inquiry that is grounded in affective experience, then, must account for the emotional landscapes that govern these intersections.

For more information please visit the course directory.

Michael Orsini

Professor at the School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa

Paul Lazarsfeld Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Vienna, Department of Sociology

Contact
morsini@uOttawa.ca
uottawa.ca


“Advanced topics in time series analysis”
Methods seminar in the doctoral programme in Social Sciences
6–10 May 2024

This lecture series will cover subjects such as cointegration and general error correction models, fractional integration, dynamic conditional correlation models, structural breaks and regime changes, bounds methods for inference, interaction models in time series analysis, modelling dynamic compositional variables, and others. A basic background in time series fundamentals is assumed. The lectures will make use of basic scalar and matrix algebra. Applications and examples used in this lecture series will employ both STATA and R.

For more information please visit the course directory.

Paul Kellstedt

Professor at Texas A&M University

Paul Lazarsfeld Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Vienna, Department of Government

Contact

kellstedt@tamu.edu
bush.tamu.edu


“Value: A radical approach”
Methods seminar in the doctoral programme in Social Sciences
5–28 June 2024

The course will introduce students into current conversations on value in anthropology, geography, and political economy (but not only), and work out a critical and dialectical ethnographic engagement with value struggles in multiple social fields and within varied spatiotemporal scales. It will then focus our gaze on concrete contemporary fields of value contention such as labor (cognitive, surplus), politics (value and the rise of the populist Right), urban transformations in the North and South (property and rentierism), money and finance, and green transitions. In this we will draw from worldwide case studies.

For more information please visit the course directory.

Don Kalb

Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen

Paul Lazarsfeld Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Vienna, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Contact
don.kalb@uib.no
uib.no