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Methods II: Research in Latin America

Vak
2016-2017

Admission Requirements

  • Students should have a thesis supervisor at the beginning of the research.

  • Before leaving for Latin America all students are obliged to send the details of their stay abroad to the International Office.

Description

Through methods and techniques of the humanities and social sciences, the student will collect material to report about in the Research Master’s thesis. The thesis supervisor will help the student with the research proposal, the selection of the location of the study, and the conduction of fieldwork in Latin America.

Under consultation with the thesis supervisor and the Board of Examiners, alternative research stays at Leiden University or data collection in the Netherlands are a possibility.

Scholarships

Students need to organize the finances of their research stay themselves. They can apply for scholarships such as:

Course Objectives

  • Students will deal with a different environment and culture and will acquire intercultural skills and learn to cope with a research practice that does not always correspond to the theories learned or the project on paper;

  • Students will gain independence in carrying out academic research in Latin America by working with interviews, observations, archive research, discourse analysis, statistical data or other methods to collect information;

  • Students will learn to operationalize the knowledge of research-methods in an independent way into a concrete and feasible research design;

  • Students will learn to reflect on and work with well-founded hypotheses and research questions, and to divide these into convenient and manageable parts;

  • Students will be able to conduct research and solve practical, methodological and content issues within a short timeframe.

  • Students will be able to report on the fieldwork conducted in the region, and write a report and critical analysis based on the data and collected material.

Timetable

Not applicable.

Mode of Instruction

Fieldwork in Latin America. During the research stay, the students are in contact with the supervisor by email at least once every two weeks to inform on the developments and/or problems.

Course Load

  • Fieldwork in Latin America (260 hrs.)

  • Revision/preparation research proposal (48 hrs.)

  • Writing research report (112 hrs.)

  • Elaboration research hypothesis, specification and state of the art (140 hrs.)

Assessment Method

The grade consists of the evaluation of a document of 9000 words in which the following 3 parts are included:

  • Revised research proposal ( more or less 2000 words).

  • Report research stay in Latin America where the student presents the fieldwork results and preliminary findings. (more or less 3000 words).

  • An elaborated critical analysis of the research hypothesis and the specification of it in a state of the art. (more or less 4000 words).

Blackboard

Not applicable

Reading list

In consultation with the thesis supervisor.

Registration

Students do not need to register in uSis for this component.

Before leaving for Latin America all students are obliged to send the details of their stay abroad to the International Office.

Contact information

For questions about this component, you can contact your thesis supervisor. During the research period, the students stay in touch with their supervisor by email to inform on the developments and/or problems.

Coordinator of Studies: M.A.G. van Leeuwen MA

Administrations Office: van Wijkplaats

Study Abroad coordinator: Karin Aalderink