Political Science Doctoral Retreat 2012

The 1st year doctoral retreat will take place 24 February 2012 at Villa Rigot.

The 2nd year doctoral retreat will take place 25 May 2012 at Villa Rigot.

All first and second year political science doctoral students must attend the retreat.

Content of papers:

First-year students should write a 10-page paper that presents and justifies a doctoral research topic based on a discussion of one or more relevant literatures.  Sketch a specific question and state briefly how that question might most plausibly be addressed in a dissertation project. 

Second-year students should build on their mémoire préliminaire de thèse (which will presumably have been approved some months previously) to write a 15-to-20-page paper which a) presents and justifies the dissertation research question; b) presents and discusses one or more specific hypotheses as well as at least one plausible alternative hypothesis; c) lays out and justifies an inferential scheme (e.g., case selection, time periods) for research on the hypotheses; and d) puts forward basic data-construction proposals (e.g., information sources, coding rules) for the research.  If by the time you write the paper, you have begun doing empirical work, you might include a few pages of that work as an appendix.