【Report】Summary of the seminar by Nick Cheesman

Title: How do politics mean? Interpretivist methodology in political science and international relations

13 June 2024

In this reading seminar, Professor Nick Cheesman introduced participants to the fundamentals of interpretivist methodology in political science and international relations. Participants read three different excerpts of texts written by prominent interpretivist authors and Nick guided the participants in understanding their approaches to interpretivist methodology.

In the first part, participants read and discussed an introductory article on the tripartite division of “qualitative, quantitative, and interpretive” approaches to research and the three characteristics of interpretivist methods. In the second part, participants read and discussed two articles on the application of interpretivist methods in political science and international relations. Professor Cheesman led the discussions by first providing his own interpretation of the texts and posing questions to the participants to solicit their understanding of the texts.

The discussions concluded with a brief recap of the major themes that participants noted in their readings of the texts. Among others, the participants recognised the different philosophical presuppositions which distinguish interpretative methods from both qualitative and quantitative methods, along with the concepts of intersubjectivity and reflexivity.