Newsletter of the Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences

Podcast: Doctor it! Episode 2 – Didactics in practice

How do you teach what you do? What are your resources and tools to master this task? In episode 2 of “Doctor it!”, we hear insights into this from PhD candidates Azade Kakavand and Cosimo Paravano. Listen in and hear their dialogue with our host Rasmus Wardemann, in which they address the myth of the “natural teacher” and share their teaching strategies in dealing with different group sizes and course types.

Doctor it!

Interested in contributing? Join our podcast team and learn how to produce, host and edit a podcast. Get in touch with us for more information!

Blog: From mines to financial markets: Tracing price-setting across scales in cobalt and lithium global production networks

(by Aleksandra Wojewska)

As the efforts toward a socio-ecological transformation intensify, the importance of electric vehicles will increase due to their lower emissions and reduced reliance on fossil fuels. However, the production of car batteries presents a sustainability contradiction ...

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Video: Migration narratives

While it is well accepted that migration shapes society, the perception of this complex phenomenon is often shaped by clichéd images of migrants. Focusing on biographies, moving objects and different modes of expression, sociologist Faime Alpagu contributes to a comprehensive understanding of migration.

Video

sowi:doc Completion Scholarship

With the sowi:doc Completion Scholarship, the Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences supports doctoral candidates in the final phase of their doctoral studies. The funding period is up to six months during which the doctoral candidates should complete and submit their doctoral thesis. Successful candidates receive € 1,200 per month for a maximum duration of six months.

Application period: 1–31 May 2022
Start of the scholarship: 1 October, 1 November or 1 December 2022

More information and application

The applications of power analysis in the social sciences

International Workshop of the Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences, Department of Communication, 4–5 May 2022

Niklas Johannes

Postdoctoral researcher in the Adolescent Well-Being in the Digital Age programme at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

Power analysis is a useful tool to estimate the sample size required in a quantitative study to detect an effect of a given size. As such, it can be employed to calculate the number of participants in an experiment that is needed to ascertain meaningful findings. Power analysis is an important skill for social scientists, as underpowered studies often lead to biased conclusions, cause replication problems and waste resources. It has thus been established as a key element for pre-registered studies, which have become the gold-standard for quantitative research in the social sciences.

Organisers: Anna Lia Brunetti, Teresa Weikmann and Selina Noetzel

More information and registration

ViDSS International Workshops

Anatomy of Life: Towards methodological innovation in health research

Methods seminar in the doctoral programme in Social Sciences, 25–29 April 2022

Aditya Bharadwaj

Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva

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

The course advances new methodological approaches to the study of health/illness and normal/pathological as conceptual categories typifying anatomy of life. The topics covered include emerging global complexities in defining health, illness, medical surveillance, epidemics, and the rise of new pharmaceuticals in the context of burgeoning biotechnologies. The course also examines the very idea of death, dying, and availability of organs for transplantation around the globe and introduces biologically, ethically, and socially complex technologies of regeneration. The course shows how these seemingly elite medical and technological developments are reframing global health concerns in the new century demanding methodological innovation braiding theory and practice. The course is built around a theoretical arc drawing on concepts ripe for methodological animation: medical gaze, biopower, supplementarity, event, immunitas. In engaging with a range of key concepts the course seeks to work up new methodological modalities implanting research practice into theory.

More information and registration

Quantitative text analysis of political speech

Methods seminar in the doctoral programme in Social Sciences, 30 May–3 June 2022

Sven-Oliver Proksch

Professor of Political Science at the University of Cologne

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

Political scientists and communication scholars increasingly rely on large amounts of political speeches to examine political phenomena. This seminar critically surveys quantitative methods for systematically extracting information from text for social scientific purposes and teaches participants how to apply these methods in practical research using R. We begin by describing the field of quantitative content analysis and by identifying current challenges, specifically for comparative and cross-national research. Subsequently, we focus on methods for classifying documents and for placing them on continuous dimensions or scales. Finally, we will examine how topic models can be integrated into political science research. The seminar will furthermore discuss how social science theories can inform a more valid application of quantitative text analysis methods. Participants of the seminar optionally have the opportunity to present their plans for a text analysis component in their dissertation.

More information and registration

Contemporary decolonial methodologies and methods

Methods seminar in the doctoral programme in Social Sciences, 17–30 June 2022

Sofia Zaragocin Carvajal

Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations, Universidad San Francisco de Quito

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

This course has two objectives in mind. The first objective is to situate contemporary global discussions on decolonial methodologies and methods and their epistemological and ontological theoretical implications. The second objective is to familiarise doctoral students with the research praxis of decolonial methodologies and methods. This doctoral course will answer the following questions: What and who makes research decolonial? What are the main concerns of doing decolonial research today? Understanding decolonial methodologies as those influenced by Indigenous methodologies, Black participatory research and Latin American popular education epistemologies, this course will focus on pluralising epistemological viewpoints while also focusing on specific methodological praxis. The methods that will be explored for this course include social cartography methods, including decolonial methods such as body-territory as well oral history. The intersections between methods and methodologies will be emphasised.

More information and registration

Grant proposal writing for late PhDs and early postdocs in the social sciences

Tuesday, 12 April 2022, 10:00–12:00

This workshop is an introduction to effective grant writing for early stage researchers in the social sciences. Instead of focusing on individual programmes we will concentrate on preparation techniques and basic principles of proposal writing. The initial presentation will cover topics including: finding the right scheme, analyzing the call text, knowing your audience, good story-telling, clarity and coherence. Experience talks by two faculty members conclude the event.

Trainer: Aron Wittfeld, Grants Advisor, Faculty of Social Sciences

Invited guests: Alice Vadrot (Erwin Schrödinger Grant, 2015–2018, ERC Starting Grant MARIPOLDATA, 2018–2023) Department of Political Science, and Florian Arendt, assistant professor (tenure track) in health communication, Department of Communication

More information and registration