Traditional and automated content analysis: A theoretically-driven integration 
Methods seminar in the doctoral programme in Social Sciences
13–24 October 2025

This course will focus on the integration of traditional and automated content analysis to study large bodies of textual data. Content analysis is a technique for “the objective, systematic, and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication” (Berelson, 1952; p.18). While it has become one of the most used techniques in communication, it has expanded to different disciplines to observe the presence of and relationships between concepts in a variety of texts. The goal of this course is to offer a theoretically-driven integration of manual and computer-aided techniques for the social sciences. This will be a hands-on course where students will learn the core steps of traditional content analysis (creating a codebook, training coders, achieving inter-coder reliability) while also performing basic computeraided textual analysis using R, a free and open-source programming language. While class examples will focus on news media content, students are welcome to bring their own text corpora to class, and to write their final content-analysis papers on general social science topics.

For more information please visit the course directory.

Magdalena Saldaña

Associate Professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

Paul Lazarsfeld Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Vienna, Department of Communication

Contact
magdalena.saldana@uc.cl
uc.cl/facultad/personas

Qualitative and quantitative methodologies in political ecology: A multiscalar approach to the analysis of environmental conflicts
Methods seminar in the doctoral programme in Social Sciences
13–21 November 2025

This course aims to explore the emergence, dynamics, and global patterns of environmental conflicts through the combined lenses of Ecological Economics and Political Ecology. At the heart of its analysis is the concept of social metabolismthe increasing extraction and consumption of energy and materials to sustain the global economyand its role in driving environmental injustices around the world. Through qualitative and quantitative methods, students will study conflicts that arise along commodity production chains: from extraction and processing to transportation and waste disposal. They will also analyse how these conflicts are shaped by both local ecological degradation and territorial realities, as well as by broader structural forces such as power relations, global trade, resource governance, and socio-political inequalities. Through lectures, case study analysis, class discussion, and individual research, this course aims to equip students with the analytical frameworks and practical tools to understand environmental conflicts not as isolated incidents, but as deeply connected to global economic processes and the metabolism of the world economy.

For more information and registration please visit the course directory.

Grettel Navas Obando

Professor at the Department of Political Studies, School of Government, University of Chile

Paul Lazarsfeld Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Vienna, Department of Political Science

Contact
grettel.navas@gobierno.uchile.cl
portafolio-academico.uchile.cl

Sensory methods
Methods seminar in the doctoral programme in Social Sciences
1–5 December 2025

Sensory knowledge has long been studied in the social sciences, and more recently, building primarily upon the advances made by visual anthropologists, sensory methodologies have gained more traction and articulation. This course aims to introduce doctoral students to established and more experimental sensory methods that can be potentially incorporated into social science projects, regardless of specific discipline or topic. The course will be filled with empirical examples from the teacher’s own projects and those in her sensory networks and will entail hands-on working with materials and sensory exercises tailored to the students’ own topics. By the end of the course students should have a better sense of how and when sensory methods might forward their research, and to gain confidence in using such approaches.

For more information and registration please visit the course directory.

Anna Harris

Professor of Anthropology and Medicine, Maastricht University

Paul Lazarsfeld Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Vienna, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Contact
a.harris@maastrichtuniversity.nl
maastrichtuniversity.nl