This course is focused on key concepts in the social sciences, and based on the reading of old and modern classics.

AISSR has an agreement with the Social Science Graduate School of the VU University to the exchange of course participation free of charge for PhD candidates.

The AISSR Educational Committee PhD has the task of assuring the quality of teaching and of the teaching process of the AISSR-GSSS PhD educational programme.

This course aims to familiarize PhDs having little to no fieldwork experience, with ethnographic research practices. In the first 4 (out of 8) weekly 3-hour seminars, we will read and discuss assigned readings (about 50-70 pp. per week). Most of the assigned readings will consist of ethnographers’ reflections on their own ethnographic research experiences.

During this series AISSR faculty members present the work of a great thinker in the field of social sciences immersing us in key features of the social science canon and ‘Great Thinkers’ and to explore contributions across disciplinary lines.

Courses fitting the individual PhD candidate's needs and featuring skills and topics that complement personal expertise and contribute to the project, under the condition that the programme group approves this participation.

All AISSR PhD Candidates are requested to develop a training programme with their supervisor and document this in their PhD Trajectory Plan. PhD and supervisors decide together which courses the student should take, depending on their previous training. PhD students should follow (or have followed) sufficient training in Methods, Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Theory (equal to around 30 ECTS).

A short practical course for people beginning their research. This course focuses on the fundamentals of academic writing, looking at articles, theses, and at argument, structure, style, paragraphing, writing for different audiences and relevant grammar.

The Methods Expertise Center of the AISSR offers the following crash courses, which are now open for registration.

The AISSR has several clubs for PhDs. These clubs meet to discuss research plans, design, data, manuscripts, etc. They offer a friendly environment in which to give and receive feedback on research, ideas and papers from a group of peers rather than the supervisory team.

Short Intensive Courses (SICs) are initiated, developed and organised by PhDs themselves. The aim of a SIC’s is to bring PhDs from various programme groups together to jointly discuss key methodological, theoretical or other academic related work.

Due to restrictions on traveling and personal meetings related to covid19, many AISSR PhD candidates have had to reconsider their methodological approaches to data collection. This will  also affect fieldwork consideration in the near future. Therefore, this Short Intensive Course intents to create a space, where we can learn about adapting data collection methods to these circumstances. This involves transferring methods to online environments, but also broadening possibilities for alternative approaches.

The Central Teaching and Learning Centre offers various (advanced) courses for teachers.

The course focuses on preparing participants to write up fieldwork, write articles for publication and to write PhD theses.