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PhD course: Applied Theorizing

This winter, I’ll be teaching Applied Theorizing again, a PhD course that aims to help PhD students develop their creative theorizing skills and advance the theoretical contributions of their dissertation projects.

The course is taught online, in English and as a part-time course (75 per cent of full time), running from December 14, 2020, to February 21, 2021, which corresponds to 7.5 Higher Education Credits.

The course is part of the compulsory coursework for PhD students in Peace & Development Research and Environmental Social Science at the School of Global Studies, GU, and we also welcome applications from eligible students at other departments and universities.

This is the course description:

The chief aim of this course is to help PhD students identify and develop the theoretical contribution of their dissertation by engaging in creative theorizing and situating their own research project within theoretical debates relevant to the dissertation’s emerging research aims. The focus of the course is on theorizing, i.e., how to come up with good ideas for research, and how to build a theoretical approach (rather than on substantive theories or meta-theories of the social sciences). Seeking to help students develop their theorizing skills through both critical reflection and hands-on exercises, the course covers issues such as the role of theory in a doctoral dissertation, how to generate new and interesting ideas, and how to identify the ideas worth pursuing, how to formulate a research problem, and how to situate a PhD project within a larger academic discourse.

The application period closes on November 30. You can find further information on the course and how to apply here.

For more on the content of the course, see this blog post with some of my reflections on the last iteration of the course. It also has a link to the course guide (but bear in mind the course guide will be substantially revised).

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