300791 Methods and their Meanings: Qualitative research in 'difficult' research contexts (Mediensoziologie) (S) (SoSe 2026)

This block seminar offers doctoral researchers an opportunity to consider, reflect on, and analyse the research process in contexts or situations considered “difficult”, “dangerous”, and “hard to access”. Whether we are interviewing business or government elites, conducting ethnography in an authoritarian setting, or gaining access to an archive, sometimes “getting the data” in such situations is “data” itself, reflective of the historical and contemporary social relations and hierarchies we aim to study. In this course, we will explore how what counts as data is negotiated and produced, understood as a site and practice embedded in particular forms of power. We will learn about and critically reflect upon the origins of qualitative methods in the social sciences, including the social and cultural assumptions undergirding methodological standards and practices. We will also engage in “workshop” sessions, where doctoral researchers will bring in their own research experiences and empirical data for analysis and critique. This course ultimately aims to sharpen doctoral researchers’ methodological toolkit and give them a more reflexive, analytically grounded way of navigating, mobilising, and making sense of the challenges of doing qualitative research in “difficult” contexts, while recognising that the research process itself is an important site of analysis.