This PhD course is part of the thematic path "Urban and Regional Studies" of the PhD programme in Urban and Regional Development (URD). The course is organised into 5 modules pertaining qualitative research (of three hours each) and 2 modules pertaining quantitative research (of two hours each). A final 1-hour workshop will invite students to share with the class how the course informed their research plans. The program is as follows: 1) Going qualitative: cultural turn and the challenge of ethics. The cornerstone of every conversation around methodologies and methods needs to be around the ethical implication of doing qualitative research in and beyond cities. This lecture provides an overview of some of these implications, offering tools to analytically and critically approach these matters. Students will also be introduced to the requirements of the Polytechnic and of the European Union related to obtaining ethical approval for their research. 2) Interviews, focus groups and discoursive approaches. A first introduction to some of the most obvious, yet challenging, qualitative methods in urban studies. The aim of this lecture is to offer students the tools to questions their assumptions around interviewing, and to offer some hints on creative approaches in this regard. Part of the lecture will be dedicated at offering a first overview on how to approach transcribing and the analysis of written text. 3) Participant observation and the craft of ethnography. Ethnography cannot be defined as a method, but as a particular epistemological take on what it means to do research and how. The lecture aims to provide students with this understanding, and also to allow them to appreciate how ethnography so understood can relate to the study of the urban. We will discuss about participant observation and its challenges, as well as read different ethnographic writing to appreciate the role of storytelling in the ethnographic project. 4) Visual methods. This lecture aims to provide an entry point into the fascinating world of the 'image' from a semiotic point of view. Students will be introduced to the basics of deconstrucing visual meaning, and on the specific use of photography in urban research. We will watch short clips taken as examples of visual video methods, and use them to discuss about the opportunities and challenges of 'going visual'. 5) Focus on: Thinking around gender, race and engaged research. Feminist and Black approaches to urban research will be introduced to students, focusing in particular on notion of situated research and related implications on self-reflexivity, positionality and commitment. The relationship between the researcher, the researched and the research will be discussed, and, on the basis of selected readings, students will be invited to think about the opportunity of introducing auto-ethnographic methods in their research. The lecture will focus also onthe nuances and challenges posed by engaged forms of research 6) Measuring socio-economic variables. Building micro-founded indicators for verifying sound theories. Descriptive statistics for interpreting large- and small-scale socio-economic phenomena. Correlations, spurious correlations and causality. Multivariate analysis (ANOVA). Focus on: (spatialized) indicators of inequality and poverty 7) Causality in quantitative research. The development of hypotheses from existing theories and statistical testing of a hypothesis. Discovery and causal inference to obtain causal knowledge directly from observational data and to estimate the impact of a change in a variable on an outcome. Focus on: Statistics with spatial data. Spatial scaling and spatial autocorrelation. New challenges with satellite data for urban studies. 8) Final workshop. A final feedback session where students will be invited to reflect on their research plans in the light of the topics covered in the course.

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The course is divided into two parts. The first provides an introduction to qualitative research methodologies and methods in Urban Studies. The overall goal is to offer researchers conceptual tools that can enable them to critically approach research design, with particular attention to the relationship between epistemologies, methodologies and methods, and the ethical implications of qualitative research. The course is designed to offer a basic understanding of a number of research methods, including focus groups and interviews, participant observation, visual inquiry and analysis, storytelling and other discoursive approaches. Hints around the analysis of qualitative data will also be provided in each lecture. The second aims to introduce some of the quantitative methodologies commonly used in regional and urban studies. The course will include simple examples, practical exercises, and critical readings of particularly significant papers. The goal is not to provide all the tools needed to independently design quantitative research, but rather to develop the sensitivity required to interpret key strands of the urban studies literature that rely on these methods. Special attention will be given to the ethical implications of using quantitative approaches, with a focus on the epistemological limits of objectivity in real-world data and deterministic models. At the end of this course PhD researchers will be able to critically approach the question of qualitative and quantitative methods in Urban Studies; to have an basic understanding on how to analyse contemporary urban spatial and social phenomena; to move within the international academic literature concerned with questions of methodologies in the broader field of critical Urban Geography; and to think critically at the methodological assumptions and ethical implications of their own research.

On site

Oral presentation

P.D.1-1 - February