2-4 June 2010 : Reflecting on values and methodology in governance research, Department of Development and Planning - Aalborg University, Denmark

This course is intended as a discussion platform dealing with ‘tricky’ issues in governance research. It is designed by PhDs, for PhDs, who are facing issues working with governance which are hard to approach in the normal day-to-day of a PhD, such as: How to research the interactions between various actors in decision-making and planning processes? How does our personal perspective affect the way we understand values of others involved in these processes? How can we methodologically close the gap between theory and empirical study? How can we make our study relevant to our research context?
The course will consist of a series of workshops with participants and senior academics discussing these questions, taking a point of departure in the research of the participants, and also lectures from senior academics sharing their own experiences of research in a governance context.
This course will focus on each individual’s project through the submission of an academic paper (4,000 – 5,000 words) and subsequent presentation during the course. The paper should take a point of departure in the questions above. Two PhD opponents and two senior academics will be assigned to each paper. The registration form (‘Brief description of PhD subject’) should contain an abstract of the planned paper for the course (not an actual description of the PhD project). Further programme details and inspiration for the full paper will be sent to participants after acceptance.
Website (Information, Registration on)