Teaching
The module gives undergraduate students the tools they need to understand why quantitative research is so useful for understanding the political world. It provides them with a foundational knowledge of such concepts as causal inference and explores the difference between good and bad quantitative research designs. The central aim is to show students how understanding data can help us answer big questions about the political world. I was awarded the UCL PGTA Provost Education Award and the PGTA Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences Teaching Award for this position. Topics covered:
- Introductory skills in R, RStudio, and RMarkdown
- Causality
- Describing Quantitative Data
- Regression: Prediction
- Regression: Specification
- Regression: Causality
- Regression: Panel Data & Difference-in-Differences
- Probability Theory
- Uncertainty
The module provides an introduction to comparative politics for undergraduate students. The course covers political institutions and aspects of civil society, public attitudes, and political culture, and how they interact to produce political and policy outcomes. Institutional topics include the nature of states and their development, democracy, and dictatorship, and variation in democratic institutions and decision-making processes. The course introduces students to a variety of political systems around the world, including both in-depth attention to one specific country, and larger-scale global trends and cross-national comparisons. The module also places emphasis on using qualitative, quantitative, and comparative data to address these themes.
Topics covered:
- The State
- Democracies and Dictatorships
- Politics and Economics
- Descriptive Research Designs
- Causal Research Designs
- Constitutions and Institutions
- Authoritarian Rule
- Political Parties
- Elections
- People and Preferences
2018/2019: Content Analysis with NVivo Workshops, UCL
The workshops introduce postgraduate students to the content analysis method and its use in political science research. It explores the strengths and potential uses of content analysis as well as the critiques and challenges of content analysis and how students can address them in their own research. Further, the workshop covers practical skills for applying content analysis using NVivo. Students will also have an opportunity to discuss their own ideas for content analysis with their peers and receive practical guidance from the workshop leader.
Topics covered:
Introductory skills in NVivo
The definition of content analysis and core features of this research
Types of content analysis (qualitative and quantitative), their uses, and critiques
Principles of and practical guidance for content analysis
Useful sources of data for content analysis
Examples of successful content analysis projects
Discussion of students' own case study research