- Welcome to An introduction to Qualitative Methods (2023)
Description: As the study of many scientific, technological and educational processes touches upon human beings and society, qualitative research methods are important tools for approaching the understanding and interpretation of these phenomena. Although reseaching qualities is part of the way in which different natural sciences and fields of engineering address some of their objects of study, the dominance of quantitative methods is dominant in these fields. The qualitative research methodologies addressed in this course are rooted in the traditions of the humanities and social sciences. The palette of qualitative methodologies is broad and its uses are varied in diverse fields of research. The course is specially designed for students in the first year of their studies. The course is suitable for students whose project is at the intersection of sciences and technology, and the human/social fields as the object of study and concern involves people and their relation with science and technology.
The course aims at: Offering an overview of the main assumptions and issues at stake when carrying qualitative research. Providing a frame for discussing the students’ own methodological design. Providing feedback on students’ problems and necessities regarding their methodological design when involving qualitative research methods.
Organizer: Professor Lars Bo Henriksen, email: lbh@plan.aau.dk
Lecturers:Professor Lars Bo Henriksen, Professor Kenneth Mølbjerg Jørgensen
ECTS: 3.0
Time: 13-15 September 2023
Place: Aalborg University
Zip code: 9220
City: Aalborg
Number of seats: 30
Deadline: 23 August 2023
Important information concerning PhD courses: We have over some time experienced problems with no-show for both project and general courses. It has now reached a point where we are forced to take action. Therefore, the Doctoral School has decided to introduce a no-show fee of DKK 3.000 for each course where the student does not show up. Cancellations are accepted no later than 2 weeks before start of the course. Registered illness is of course an acceptable reason for not showing up on those days. Furthermore, all courses open for registration approximately four months before start. This can hopefully also provide new students a chance to register for courses during the year. We look forward to your registrations.
- Teacher: Lars Bo Henriksen
- Teacher: Kenneth Mølbjerg Jørgensen
Welcome to Ethics and Social Responsibilities for Scientists, Engineers and Health Researchers (2023)
Description: The course addresses ethical dilemmas that researchers might face in turbulent times, where clear-cut distinctions between pure and applied science can no longer be upheld, and try to create a space where the participating PhD students can qualify their reflections on their role as young researchers by drawing on philosophical, sociological, and ethical perspectives in analyzing possibilities and problems of contemporary science, engineering and technology. During the course the participants are asked to ethically analyze their own PhD projects, and present their analyses. To facilitate the ethical analyses of PhD projects a number of topical case-studies and relevant analytical tools are presented.
You will find all course information here on Moodle. You will find the texts and the tasks for each day in one folder.
The course is designed so that each day is split up into two sessions: One before lunch and one after. Usually a session begins with a lecture (90 minutes, including breaks) followed by discussions or group work. During the last session on the last day participants are kindly asked to do a PP presentation on ethical issues in their Ph.D. project (duration: no more than 15 minutes). We will use the group work and discussions during the first two days to qualify your presentation. It is, however a good idea, to begin reflecting on ethical issues in your project when you read the course material.
Reading the text material connected to the lectures, and preparing a PP presentation on ethical aspects of your Ph.D. project, are mandatory activities for all participants. I hope you will have some enlightening and reflective days.
Time: 22-25 August 2023
Place: Copenhagen, 2450
Deadline: 01 August 2023
Important information concerning PhD courses: We have over some time experienced problems with no-show for both project and general courses. It has now reached a point where we are forced to take action. Therefore, the Doctoral School has decided to introduce a no-show fee of DKK 3.000 for each course where the student does not show up. Cancellations are accepted no later than 2 weeks before start of the course. Registered illness is of course an acceptable reason for not showing up on those days. Furthermore, all courses open for registration approximately four months before start. This can hopefully also provide new students a chance to register for courses during the year. We look forward to your registrations.
- Teacher: Tom Holmgaard Børsen
Welcome to Interdisciplinary Research Design (2023)
Description: Many PhD projects at Aalborg University are ‘born interdisciplinary’. Equally, there is an increasing value attached to the interdisciplinary theme in the research funding community and public debate. Regardless hereof the tools and skills for thinking about interdisciplinary research designs has not been addressed and developed sufficiently amongst PhD students. The course is therefore motivated by this gap. It targets all PhD students with projects that are interdisciplinary either as a key feature of their initial design (‘born interdisciplinary’), or the ones that incrementally moves towards this as a function of an emerging awareness to the importance of an expanded research design during the process (‘becoming interdisciplinary’). Next to this existing gap in interdisciplinary research skills the course is motivated by an observation made over several years, namely that different scientific disciplines only is one level of needed cross-fertilization. Another is the ability to move more effortless across different methods, either in order to triangulate, or simply because of the nature of the research question. The so-called ‘problem-based-learning’ (PBL) research model need to take an interdisciplinary approach that includes actual scientific disciplines and their theoretical and conceptual apparatuses, as well as the multitude of methods of relevance to complex and real-life research questions. Finally, the course is motivated by an interest in bringing such an increased interdisciplinary awareness and skill-development in sync with the requirements for contemporary research dissemination and communication.
Learning objectives: The main learning objective is that the PhD student becomes able to identify the relevant dimensions of interdisciplinary research design in her or his own project (either as what is there from the outset (‘born’) or what might be implemented during the research process (‘becoming’). Next, participants must be able to develop a motivated and well-argued plan for any interdisciplinary research design proposal amendments.
Key Literature: Some of the key literature within Interdisciplinary research is set as the curriculum (see below). However, given the critical and explorative nature of the course we shall also look into readings that may look less obvious, but which have the critical creative potential for stimulating new ideas and thoughts.
Bark, R. H., M. E. Kragt & B. J. Robson (2016) Evaluating an interdisciplinary research project: Lessons learned for organisations, researchers and funders, International Journal of Project Management, 34 (2016) 1449–1459
Barry, A., G. Born & G. Weszkalnys (2008) Logics of interdisciplinarity, Economy and Society, 37:1, 20-49
Benson, T. C. (1982) Five Arguments Against Interdisciplinary Studies, Issues in Integrative Studies No.1 38-48
Committee on Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research, Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (2004) Facilitating interdisciplinary research. National Academies. Washington: National Academy Press
Darbellay, F. (2012) The circulation of knowledge as an interdisciplinary process: Travelling concepts, analogies, and metaphors, Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies 30, 1-18
Dupré, J. A (2014) Process ontology for biology. Philos. Mag. 81–88 (2014)
Jessop, B. & N. Sum (2001) Pre-disciplinary and Post-disciplinary Perspectives, New Political Economy, January 89-101
Lakoff, G. & M. Johnson (1980) Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 3-33
Menken, S. & M. Keestrea (2016) An Introduction to Interdisciplinary Research. Theory & Practice, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press (KEY READING!)
Rigney, D. (2001) The Metaphorical Society. An Invitation to Social Theory, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 1-12 (chapter one: The Metaphorical Imagination)
Sayer, A. (2000) For Postdisciplinary Studies: Sociology and the Curse of Disciplinary Parochialism/Imperialism, in J. Eldridge, J. MacInnes, S. Scott, C. Warhurst and A. Witz (eds) (2000) For Sociology: Legacies and Prospects, Durham: Sociology Press, pp. 83-91
Schön, D. A. (1993) Generative Metaphor: a perspective on problem-setting in social policy, In A. Ortony (ed.) Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 137-163
Organizer: Professor Ole B. Jensen - obje@create.aau.dk
Lecturers: Post-doc Zakaria Djebbara and Ole B. Jensen
ECTS: 2,5 (without essay) or 4 (with essay)
Time: 22-24 May 2023
Place: Aalborg University:
City: Aalborg
Number of seats: 15
Deadline: 01 May 2023
Important information concerning PhD courses: We have over some time experienced problems with no-show for both project and general courses. It has now reached a point where we are forced to take action. Therefore, the Doctoral School has decided to introduce a no-show fee of DKK 3.000 for each course where the student does not show up. Cancellations are accepted no later than 2 weeks before start of the course. Registered illness is of course an acceptable reason for not showing up on those days. Furthermore, all courses open for registration approximately four months before start. This can hopefully also provide new students a chance to register for courses during the year. We look forward to your registrations.
- Teacher: Ole B. Jensen
Welcome to Understanding theory of science
Description:
Theory of science is an attempt to comprehend science, in order to better identify it, shape it, guide it, and perhaps endorse or denounce it. To do this theory of science use philosophical topics, such as epistemology, ontology and axiology. Other fields, like sociology and semiotics, also form the theoretical and methodological base for the analysis of science. In some sense, theory of science is a form of meta-scientific inquiry, but it is also a form of reflexivity within science itself.
Every scientist, Ph.D. students perhaps more than others, can at times come to find themselves in need of “thinking things through”. Whether it springs out of doubt, or from the need to defend, or something third, is of lesser importance. The point is merely that every once in a while we need to carefully consider the science that we represent, in order to locate or re-locate ourselves in it or to justify the enterprise we’re involved with. The quality of our scientific work will undoubtable benefit from our ability to better comprehend the fundamental conditions, values and presumptions that more or less explicitly forms the scientific requirements and expectations in the first place.
This course offers the opportunity to practice the art of theory of science, to better acquaint oneself with the field, and to learn how to apply its thoughts and positions to the science and the scientist of one’s own. The focus of the course will be current problems in theory of science that are relevant for research in the health sciences and the technological and natural sciences. These topics could be issues of measurement, facts, objectivism, and ‘evidence-based’; but also issues like stakeholders, the role and influence of tools, peer-review and reductionism.
The course will be topic oriented workshops or seminars, with the lecturer as a presenter, but more importantly as a facilitator of qualified deliberation on the topics. The sessions will therefore require active participation and an open mind from everyone involved.
I look forward to some wonderful joint explorations into some meaningful topics of relevance and value for the quality of ourselves and of our work.
Organizer: Associate Professor Patrik Kristoffer Kjærsdam Telléus, pkt@hst.aau.dk
Lecturers: Associate Professor Patrik Kristoffer Kjærsdam Telléus
ECTS: 2
Time: 26, 27, 28 April and 01 May 2023
Place: Aalborg University, Frederiks Bajers Vej 7G, room 5-109, all days.
Number of seats: 15
Deadline: 03 April 2023
Important information concerning PhD courses: We have over some time experienced problems with no-show for both project and general courses. It has now reached a point where we are forced to take action. Therefore, the Doctoral School has decided to introduce a no-show fee of DKK 3.000 for each course where the student does not show up. Cancellations are accepted no later than 2 weeks before start of the course. Registered illness is of course an acceptable reason for not showing up on those days. Furthermore, all courses open for registration approximately four months before start. This can hopefully also provide new students a chance to register for courses during the year. We look forward to your registrations.
- Teacher: Patrik Kristoffer Kjærsdam Telléus