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GURN trains young Ukrainian researchers in qualitative research: First part of online Methods School successfully implemented

Just in time for the start of the winter term, the GURN Methods School 2020 was launched. It is a new and unique online event series, primarily aimed at Ukrainian think tanks and junior researchers who focus on policy analysis and not so much on academic research. The require­ments for selection were an interest in the use of quali­tative methods and a concrete research idea or analytical publi­cation in the pipeline, which the appli­cants sought to improve through their partic­i­pation in the Methods School with regards to structure, research design and method­ology. Also noteworthy: The trainers are both from Ukraine and Germany. Many of them are alumni of GURN or its preceding project PAIC (“Platform for Analytics and Inter­cul­tural Communication”).

The GURN Methods School 2020 is organised in four separate thematic blocks that will be imple­mented throughout autumn. The partic­i­pants will learn how to develop high-quality research designs, apply quali­tative methods and become familiar with the analysis of discourse phenomena. During the first part which took place in the course of six online events from late September to early October, the young researchers focused on devel­oping their own research design, the method­ological basics of comparison and dealt with process tracing – an instrument for recon­structing political, social and insti­tu­tional processes.

From initial idea to research design

The first two seminars on September 25 and 26, 2020 were led by Dr Oksana Huss (University of Bologna) and Oleksandra Keudel (Free University of Berlin). During two three-hour workshops, they gave valuable advice to the young academics on how to develop relevant research questions, work in a result-oriented manner without overlooking important findings, formulate indicators and gener­alise results. Two further sessions on October 2 and 3 focused on the structure, argumen­tation and commu­ni­cation of scien­tific results.

The logic of comparison and the search for causality

The third and fourth seminar on September 30 and October 1, 2020 were led by Thomas Barret (Free University of Berlin) and Sebastian Hoppe. Barret taught about the advan­tages and disad­van­tages of Most Similar Systems Designs (MSSD) and Most Different Systems Designs (MDSD) for the devel­opment of compar­ative studies. In the class of Hoppe, who works at the Institute for Eastern European Studies at the Free University of Berlin and is a guest researcher at the German Institute for Inter­na­tional and Security Affairs (SWP), the partic­i­pants dealt with process tracing. Process tracing is a method­ological approach which is partic­u­larly suitable for the inves­ti­gation of complex phenomena and attempts to identify causal links.

The GURN Methods School is a series of online workshops with a focus on quali­tative research that took place in autumn 2020. In four thematic blocks, young researchers, most of whom work at Ukrainian think tanks, among other things learned to develop their own research design, to apply quali­tative methods such as process tracing, content/video analysis and inter­views, and to analyse political discourses from a social science perspective.

The project “German Ukrainian Researchers Network” (GURN) aims at estab­lishing a German-Ukrainian research network for junior and senior researchers and their organ­i­sa­tions, strength­ening country expertise and promoting joint cooper­ation projects. GURN is conducted in close cooper­ation with the Ilko Kucheriv Democ­ratic Initia­tives Foundation(DIF, Kyiv), the think tank devel­opment and research initiative think twice UA(Kyiv), the New Europe Center(NEC, Kyiv) and is kindly supported by the Federal Foreign Office.