Introduction to Qualitative Research: Epistemology, Design, and Analytic Judgment

Catalog description

This doctoral-level course introduces qualitative research as an epistemological, ethical, and political project. Specifically, the course prepares doctoral students to design and conduct, qualitative research that interrogates power, advances social transformation, and resists extractive and colonial research traditions sometimes embedded in the social sciences. The course engages core qualitative techniques to data collection—including interviews, focus groups, observations, archival research, and document analysis—while insisting that method cannot be disentangled from epistemological assumptions, theory, positionality, values, or historical context. Throughout the course, students will be asked to grapple with questions of voice, representation, reflexivity, ethics, and accountability, particularly when conducting research with marginalized communities. By the end of the course, students will be expected to design a theoretically coherent qualitative study, justify methodological choices, and articulate the analytic and political stakes of their work. This course is designed for doctoral students who intend to conduct qualitative research and who are prepared to defend their methodological decisions with intellectual rigor, ethical clarity, and an explicit analysis of power and social position.