Methods for Building Better Theories

This hands-on workshop aims to teach participants methods for producing more compelling theories. While young scholars are taught increasingly sophisticated research methods, little attention is paid to how to construct good theories of important social phenomena. As a result, there is often a mismatch between very sophisticated research designs and the simple and often common-sense theoretical explanations they are used to analyze.

Through practical exercises and interaction with your own research, the course goes through the key stages in the theorization process. Theorization is an iterative process that involves a dialogue between empirics, existing theories, and interesting theoretical explanations. In this course the focus will be on using within-case and cross-case comparative methods to develop better theories that both can provide explanations of both particular cases and more general patterns across cases. On the completion of the course, participants will be equipped with the necessary skills to engage in better theorization using case study methods.

Date & Time:

The training will take place on May 26 and 27, 2026

Please note that the course is open for external participants, subject to available spaces.

About the Trainer:

Derek Beach is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University, specializing in process tracing methodology both for academic research and for policy evaluation. He teaches and supervises at all levels and has extensive experience training scholars in process tracing and case-based approaches that support stronger theory building.