This course provides an introduction and overview to a range of research methods in critical security studies. Its aim is to provide tools and methods to students of critical security studies in support of clear research design and rigorous scholarly methods. Lectures and discussions will emphasize reapplication of classical scientific research questions for the field of critical security studies: sufficient proof, critical position, and coherency of argument, reshaped and reapplied to these four principles.
Critical security studies can be understood as a scholarly approach that is attentive to the workings of power and exclusion inherent in social phenomena. Though objects of research can vary considerably, a four basic principles shape the field of critical analysis:
- Social and political life are interwoven without any one unifying principle or logic;
- Agency--the capacity to act--is not reserved to individual human beings, but rather is everywhere;
- Causality is emergent. In other words, critical analysis does not identify what necessarily happens, but rather what the conditions of possibility of something happening are;
- Research, writing and public engagement are inherently political.
Lectures and discussions will emphasize reapplication of classical scientific research questions for the field of critical security studies: sufficient proof, critical position, and coherency of argument, reshaped and reapplied to these four principles.
The deadline for applications is 31 October 2014. For more information on curriculum and registration, see the course website.
The course is organised in collaboration with the SOURCE Network on Societal Security.
