Deadline:
September 14, 2025
Program Starts: January 05, 2026
Program Ends: January 08, 2026
Location(s)
Qatar
Doha
Overview
Details
Workshop Theme
The workshop will be led by Drs. Lara Khattab (Doha Institute), Stacey Philbrick Yadav (Hobart and William Smith), Sarah E. Parkinson (Johns Hopkins University), and Ammar Shamaileh (Doha Institute). Together with selected workshop fellows, co-leaders will focus on enhancing social scientific interest in participatory and engaged scholarship in the MENA region.
This workshop builds on growing interest in the methodological, practical, and ethical questions that arise from the use of political science research in non-academic or academic-adjacent contexts. An increasing number of political scientists practice or will practice forms of participatory and/or engaged research over the course of their careers (see, e.g., Bullock and Hess 2021). For some, this might entail working as an expert consultant for an intergovernmental agency or national government. For others, it can mean full-time employment as researchers for civil society, advocacy organizations, or other community-based organizations and social movements. Few graduate programs integrate this reality into the way they teach research methods or ethics. Political science graduate students need to seek out such training; yet, many may not even realize they will need it until they find themselves in applied research settings.
This workshop has two central goals. First, we seek to de-center the academy as the only environment in which political scientists conduct scientific research and where knowledge is produced, drawing on the
organizers’ collective experiences with applied scholarship and connections to others who do participatory and engaged research. In doing so, the workshop seeks to make visible some of the many ways in which political scientists can approach engaged work. Second, the workshop aims to provide participants with the methodological tools and professional vocabulary necessary to make applied research legible and relevant in academic spaces.
The workshop organizers seek applications for projects that focus primarily on the following sub-themes:
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Approaches to participatory research, with discussion of different modes of participatory research, the questions they can (and can’t) answer, and how to ground them in academic debates.
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Real-world examples of successful participatory and/or engaged research projects.
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The promises and pitfalls of survey research in the MENA.
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The challenges of integrating diverse data sources (key-informant interviews, focus groups, survey data, participant observation).
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Reflections on research collaborations, with discussion of philosophical, ethical, and pragmatic considerations beyond formal ethics review.
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Reflection on positionality on and off the page and how it relates to political science research.
Opportunity is About
Eligibility
Candidates should be from:
Description of Ideal Candidate
Eligible Participants: Applications are open to advanced doctoral students, postdoctoral fellows, and early-career scholars (those who received their PhDs within the past 5 years), as well as early-career PhD- holding practitioners who are citizens of countries in the MENA region. The program is tailored for scholars in political science and other social science disciplines—including peace and conflict studies, international studies, development studies, and adjacent fields—undertaking research that seeks to consciously employ participatory and engaged research methods in the MENA region, particularly those working on projects that use in-country fieldwork, rely on original data collection, and explore methodological, ethical, and practical challenges of social science research in applied settings. Priority will be given to scholars currently based at universities or research institutes in the region. Professional fluency in English is required.
Dates
Deadline: September 14, 2025
Program starts:
January 05, 2026
Program ends:
January 08, 2026
Program Starts: January 05, 2026
Program Ends: January 08, 2026
Cost/funding for participants
All costs covered.
Un-save Opportunity
Internships, scholarships, student conferences and competitions.
