Purpose      

The idea behind this course is to give the PhD fellows knowledge of useful methods related to legal research. The purpose of the course is to focus on the necessity of a good connection between your research aims, your research questions, and your sources and your methods.

The course will focus on designs and methods. We will cover the main methods – legal dogmatics, comparative legal methods, and how to work with theories of legal pluralism and governance theories. We will also present and discuss the special challenges related to interdisciplinary approaches and multiple and different legal methodologies in the same project.

Draft programme

Course responsible

Professor Bettina Lemann Kristiansen, Aarhus BSS, AU, and professor Sten Schaumburg-Müller, SDU

Participants’ preparation

You will have to send in three papers in English.

Assignment no. 1: A short presentation of your research project (not more than 1 A4 Page)

Assignment no. 2:  A short paper (not more than 1 A4 Page) in which you explain how you are working on ensuring a connection between your research questions and your choice of methodologies.  You are most welcome to end up with questions that you hope answered during the course.

Assignment no. 3: Please, make a brief summary (not more than 1 A4 Page) of a text on legal research methodology and something you have used or have considered using in your dissertation work. In your paper you will have to give an assessment of its usefulness (or lack of it) in relation to your project.

You may write the three assignments in one document.

The assignments should be send to mhyl@law.au.dk not later than 28.May at 12:00 under the heading “PhD course June 2021”. Remember to indicate your name on the papers. 

ECTS

The course is included in the mandatory course package for PhD fellows at the Department of Law, Aarhus BSS, AU, where there is an overall credit. For other participants, the credit is 5 ECTS.

Language

English, if there are participants who are not familiar with Danish

Registration fee

None

Registration                    

No later than 20 May 2021 – Please send an email to course responsible PhD secretary Mette Hyldahl (mhyl@law.au.dk).

Number of participants

A maximum of 20 people