Social Science Research Council

IPFP Regional Research Training Workshops

The increasing internationalization of the community of social science scholars places a burden on those responsible for training social scientists to see to it that students are equipped with the skills they will need to contribute to as well as benefit from the international character of this community. In addition to skills required for communication across disciplinary boundaries, social scientists must be equipped to communicate across language barriers, cultural divides and differences in academic and scholarly traditions.

In 1993, the International Predissertation Fellowships initiated a workshop series entitled "Conducting Social Science Research in the Developing World" to address this need. The workshops brought together a small group of students holding Social Science Research Council (SSRC) fellowships and students at universities in the developing world to engage in interdisciplinary dialogue about the design of social science research. SSRC Fellows participating in these workshops were based in the region at the time the workshops took place.

The goal of the workshops, which were held in the developing world and moderated by local scholars, was to encourage graduate students of social science to strengthen their research design skills and, in particular, to consider the importance of culture as a factor in their research plans. The workshops were designed to maximize opportunities for SSRC Fellows and students at local universities in the different parts of the world to spend time getting to know each other professionally and socially. It is for this reason that the workshop activities included academic sessions and social events.

Workshops have been hosted by:

The workshops were intended to encourage dialogue and collaboration between social science scholars who were being trained in the US and those being trained in the developing world. Participants in the workshops represented several social science disciplines in order to promote interdisciplinary discourse and numbered no more than about 10 - 12 students and two faculty moderators. The small -- almost intimate -- scale of these workshops was one of the keys to their success in "bridge-building." The members of the group became comfortable sharing ideas and suggestions or criticisms with one another more easily and more quickly in a small group. A healthy balance between IPFP Fellows and local students was also important in this regard.

Another key to the success of these workshops was the relatively informal structure of the proceedings. The proceedings were essentially a sequence of discussions over several days that centered around issues of research design and methodological considerations raised by students' plans for research. The workshops did not involve the presentation of research papers, and participating students could not have already completed their dissertations. Rather, the workshops were for students still grappling with the question of how to design the dissertation project.

In preparation for the workshop, each participant was expected to prepare an 8 - 10 page Statement of Research Goals. These documents, which were circulated to workshop participants a few weeks before the workshop, discussed the students' research goals and strategies as they were currently conceived and served as the foci of discussions during the workshop. The students were expected to prepare comments on each others' statements in advance to ensure that the statements were read with care and to facilitate rapid and thoughtful entry into the discussions.

The statements were intended to provide background for a discussion. They constituted an exercise in research design and did not need to be a preliminary dissertation proposal. The documents a) provided background on the participant's knowledge, experience or interest in the region of the world chosen for study; b) explained the nature and evolution of his/her research goals; c) addressed some intellectual and theoretical issues of major importance to her/him in relation to his/her emerging research goals and why it was appropriate to pursue these disciplinary questions in the particular region in which he/she had chosen to study them; and d) presented a working draft of a research design for a project addressing his/her theoretical concern(s), indicating areas in which he/she would be most interested in having feedback.

During the workshop, each participant offered a 5 - 7 minute introduction to the discussion of his/her statement which highlighted the research questions and methods discussed therein and indicated issues regarding which feedback is desired. Each participant was allotted an hour of discussion time. Discussions emphasized adequacy of methodology in addressing a given theoretical issue; adequacy of attention to country/region-specific concerns; problems of data collection, analysis and interpretation. The workshops were not intended to provide opportunities for students to defend a choice of research question or report findings. Rather, they were intended to provide opportunities for each student to benefit from feedback on their statement from other workshop participants and to explore with the group ways of getting at answers to questions. The goal of the discussions was to explore new ideas.

The responsibility of scholars designated as moderators or facilitators was to foster discussion and debate among the student participants, to facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue and to identify important issues as they emerged. Facilitators were expected to take care not to dominate the discussions but rather to limit their own contributions to the discussion except in so far as they fulfilled these functions. They were also expected to make themselves available to workshop participants in an advisory capacity and to share their own research experiences during meals and other social activities.

The IPFP, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC)/American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) program which sponsored this workshop series, was funded by the Ford Foundation. The Program offered fellowships to doctoral students at universities in the United States for language training and area study that prepared them to develop a dissertation project in the developing world. One of the goals of the IPFP was to encourage students of social science to strengthen their research design skills and, in particular, to consider the importance of history and culture as factors in designing their research. Another goal concerned the internationalization of social science. The Program sought to encourage graduate students to become familiar with the work of social scientists across the globe and with the variation in organization of social science research and training, as well as to establish contact among members of the international community of social scientists across disciplines. The research training workshops were an integral part of this program as they addressed both of these goals.