Why and how should we study politics? This course is a graduate introduction to methods in studying politics. It starts with debates around modes of inquiry in the discipline. Most of the course focuses on practical strategies for researching politics. Students will consider a range of approaches. These will include field research; political ethnography; historical methods; textual analysis; quantitative analyses; and experimental methods. We will select two or three major political ‘cases’ as a framework for assessing the merits of different approaches.