PhD Courses in Denmark

Dates and time: 6-7 November 2025 from 9.00 to 16:00

This course is designed to help participants refine and strengthen their Ph.D. project designs. Through a series of sessions, participants will present and critically reflect on their research plans, receiving constructive feedback from fellow Ph.D. students and the course convenor. Additionally, the course will cover broader topics such as thesis type (monograph or article-based), quality standards, and strategies for writing and publishing academic articles.

Course Structure:
This is a two-day course designed to help participants refine their Ph.D. projects. After a short introduction, we will focus on participants’ projects, following this disposition: 

 1. Each participant will write a five-page summary about their project, based on the following structure:

• Research Question: What is your central research question? What assumptions underlie your research question? How does your project contribute to existing research in your field?

• Sampling: What is your object of inquiry? Which aspects of empirical reality do you focus on, and why?

• Concepts: What are the main theories and concepts guiding your research? How do you define the key concepts in your study?

• Methodology: What methods and analytical strategies will you use? What are the strengths and limitations of your chosen approach?

• Transparency: How will you ensure transparency in your research?

2. Each participant will do a short project presentation, followed by a 30-minute discussion of their project.

3. The course will also include brief presentations by the course convenor on key aspects of Ph.D. project design, including research questions, sampling, concepts, methodology, and transparency. Each presentation will be followed by plenary discussions centered on participants' own projects.

Course organiser: Diana-Roxana Galos, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Copenhagen

ECTS: 2.5

Max. number of PhD students: 10

Registration: Please register via the link in the box no later than 2 October 2025.

Further information: For more information about the PhD course, please contact the PhD Administration (phd@hrsc.ku.dk) or the course organiser.

Preliminary reading list:

Research question:
Sandberg, J., & Alvesson, M. (2011). Ways of constructing research questions: gapspotting or problematization? Organization, 18(1), 23-44.
Mears, A. (2017). Puzzling in sociology: On doing and undoing theoretical puzzles. Sociological Theory, 35(2), 138-146.
http://www.jessicacalarco.com/tips-tricks

Sampling:
Collier, D., Mahoney, J., & Seawright, J. (2004). Claiming too much: Warnings about selection bias. Rethinking social inquiry: Diverse tools, shared standards, 85-102.
Elwert, F., & Winship, C. (2014). Endogenous selection bias: The problem of conditioning on a collider variable. Annual review of sociology, 40, 31.
Ragin, C. C. (1992). “Casing” and the process of social inquiry. What is a case, 217-226.

Concepts:
Abend, G. (2008). The meaning of ‘theory’. Sociological theory, 26(2), 173-199.
Swedberg, R. (2016). Before theory comes theorizing or how to make social science more interesting. The British journal of sociology, 67(1), 5-22.
Goertz, G., & Mahoney, J. (2012). Concepts and measurement: Ontology and epistemology. Social Science Information, 51(2), 205-216.

Logic:
Jerolmack, C., & Khan, S. (2014). Talk is cheap: Ethnography and the attitudinal fallacy. Sociological methods & research, 43(2), 178-209.
Lamont, M., & Swidler, A. (2014). Methodological pluralism and the possibilities and limits of interviewing. Qualitative Sociology, 37(2), 153-171.
Becker, H. (1992). Cases, causes, conjunctures, stories, and imagery. In: C. Ragin & H. Becker (eds.) What is a Case? Exploring the Foundations of Social Inquiry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 205-217.
Keuschnigg, M., Lovsjö, N., & Hedström, P. (2018). Analytical sociology and computational social science. Journal of Computational Social Science, 1, 3-14.

Transparency:
Breznau, N. (2021). Does Sociology Need Open Science? Societies, 11(1), 9.