Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science- Methodologies of Political Inquiry

This concentration will provide a foundation in the epistemological, ontological, and philosophical commitments guiding different modes of social scientific inquiry. In doing so, it will offer an introduction to a range of methodological approaches, including but not limited to: quantitative and qualitative analysis, interpretation, ethnography, feminist methodologies, discourse analysis, critical theory, and historiography. Through in-depth exploration of contrasting approaches, the concentration will lead students to greater awareness of how methodology defines the terrain of knowledge production, the validity of truth claims, and different modes of knowing about the social world. In addition, the concentration will ground students in the history of the discipline itself in order to historicize the methodologies it employs.
The Department's approach to the discipline of political science is consciously eclectic, based on an assumption that the study of politics cannot be reduced to any one theory or a single set of methods. Mutual appreciation among faculty members with diverse interests and approaches characterizes the intellectual atmosphere of the Department. With more than 30 faculty members, the department covers a wide array of methodologies and research interests, including the study of theory, institutions, political behavior, and political development. UMass-Amherst offers PhD and accelerated MA degrees in six fields of political inquiry: American Politics, Comparative Politics, International Relations, Political Theory, Public Policy, and Public Law. In addition, while each field is its own thriving research community, your studies can involve multiple research clusters whose work crosses subfields, including Conflict, Violence and Security, Political Economy, Global Forces, Computational Social Science, and Ambiguities of Democracy. Youll also choose methods training appropriate to the questions you are askingfrom statistical modeling and network analysis to ethnography and textual analysisand enjoy mentorship by scholars often across diverse subfields and methodological orientations.