Here’s something that will be of interest to research students from a range of disciplines at the University of Lincoln. From the Staff Message List (internal access only):

A fortnightly seminar series on ‘Core Concepts in the Social Sciences‘ has been designed to help research students from across the university discuss, and become more familiar with, philosophical and methodological aspects of their research. Seminars are open to all reseach students at any stage of study, but will be most useful for those in the social sciences. The seminar series will begin in September. Please email Dr David Piggott to express an interest and recieve further information.

The seminars are designed to be informal and interactive. The goal is not to ‘teach’ research students about research but rather to help them articulate and defend their own (emerging) positions more clearly. To this end, staff members will facilitate discussion based around pre-released readings and questions on topics such as critical realism, epistemology, the Popper vs Kuhn debate, grounded theory, and rigour and criteriology in qualitative research. We hope that, by participating in these seminars, research students will be better prepared to defend their research as their viva approaches.