Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research (IQMR)
New Voices Initiative
Call for Applications for IQMR 2025 (June 15-27, 2025)
Application Due Date: January 31, 2025
Background and Motivation
The Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research (IQMR) is a two-week training program held each summer at Syracuse University. IQMR promotes the teaching and application of a diverse range of advanced qualitative research methods and their combination with complementary analytic techniques in political science and cognate disciplines. The Institute’s overall goals are to enable attendees to create and critique methodologically sophisticated qualitative and multi-method research, and to foster the continued growth of a collaborative community of scholars who develop, refine, teach, and employ qualitative research methods. Each summer IQMR participants choose from among approximately 20 modules led by more than 30 faculty. Over the last 22 years, more than 3,000 graduate students and junior faculty have been trained at IQMR.
The New Voices Initiative aims to identify, encourage, and support early career researchers (ECRs) interested in serving as IQMR instructors, growing the pool of scholars potentially available to teach at the Institute. More broadly, the Initiative seeks to increase the number and diversity of faculty who teach qualitative and multi-method research in the social sciences. The Institute is uniquely positioned to offer junior scholars who aspire to teach methods the experience they need to transition from using to teaching social science methods. Over time, increasing numbers of outstanding ECRs have joined IQMR as instructors. Building on that foundation, the Institute is particularly interested in receiving applications from ECRs in the social sciences who are members of groups that have historically been under-represented in academia, and can offer fresh insights and perspectives on the methods taught at IQMR.
Eligibility Requirements
To be eligible to participate in the New Voices Initiative, ECRs must:
- Have received a doctoral degree in the social sciences between 2018 and June 2025 or, in exceptional circumstances, plan to complete their doctorate by June 2026;
- Be based at a U.S. institution;
- Have methodological expertise as demonstrated through publishing work focused on the development of qualitative methods, and/or teaching courses focused on qualitative methods, that would enable them to contribute to modules focused on the following:
- Logic of qualitative methods (logic and set theory; regularity theory of causality)
- Field methods (fieldwork design, survey research, archival research, focus groups, interviews, digital fieldwork)
- Comparative historical analysis
- Non-controlled comparison (case selection, logics of comparison)
- Interpretive methods
- Ethnographic methods
- Process tracing
- Bayesian inference
- Causal diagrams for within-case analysis
- Geographic Information Systems
- Integrating qualitative and quantitative techniques
- Integrating qualitative and experimental techniques
- Text as data
- Qualitative comparative analysis
Application Process
Eligible ECRs should complete and submit the Google Form linked below by January 31, 2025.
Selection and Support
The selection committee will comprise the IQMR leadership team and one or more of the faculty who lead the modules in which applicants express an interest in teaching. They will review all eligible applications to identify the two applicants who could make the most significant contribution through, and benefit the most from, teaching at IQMR. Selection decisions will be made, and all applicants notified of the status of their application, by late February 2025.
Each Teaching Fellow will join the teaching team for a particular set of modules, and will be guided and mentored by those modules’ seasoned instructors. It is hoped that Teaching Fellows will begin or continue to publish on the conduct of qualitative and multi-method research, and/or to teach their own methods classes at their home institution.
Teaching Fellows are paid an honorarium, and their round trip economy class domestic air travel, lodging in Syracuse, NY, and a per diem for the duration of their stay are covered by the Institute. Fellows who teach at IQMR 2025 will be eligible to teach at IQMR in subsequent summers.