Gowd Kiran Kumar, Ph.D. research scholar in the Department of Political Science, School of Social Sciences, University of Hyderabad (UoH) successfully completed the 7th Annual International Political Science Association (IPSA) – National University of Singapore (NUS) Summer School for Social Science Research Methods that was held on June 25-July 6, 2018, at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He received SAGE-IPSA merit grant to participate in the Methods School.
The Methods School offers a wide variety of basic to advanced courses in quantitative, qualitative, and formal methods. All of the Methods School courses focus on both the theory and practice of social science research and provide high-quality training in diverse, state-of-the-art methods and techniques by outstanding and highly experienced international faculty.
Kiran attended the ‘Network Analysis’ course offered by Prof. Adam D Henry, University of Arizona. Network concepts are increasingly prevalent across a wide range of disciplines and are often used as a tool to study complex phenomenon, such as cooperation, diffusion of innovation, and social capital. The course introduces participants to major research questions in the study of networks and is concerned with basic methods commonly used to analyze networks in the social sciences. It covers topics such as the managing of network data, visualization of networks, and descriptive network analysis. Although the study of networks is theoretically motivated, this course is primarily focused on developing practical skills in working with network data. Participants of the course learn, through hands-on training in the free software package R, how to manage and rigorously analyze network data.
Kiran is currently working on the ‘Network Governance and Public Service Delivery’ as a part of his doctoral thesis under Prof. I. Ramabrahamam.