Research Methods in Religious Studies
The course is designed to train graduate students in the planning and conduct of research projects in the human sciences, and more especially in religious and cultural studies. The course will enable students to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of scholarly argument, and how to evidence truth claims, in the human sciences. The course will train students in research design, and in generating and developing research questions and problems amenable to investigation in graduate research projects. The course will help students to learn how to plan and write scholarly literature reviews, and how to identify, gather and interpret data in such a way as to generate new theoretical insights from the study of empirical and internet-originate data, and/or primary texts such as sacred scriptures or organisational reports. The course will develop an understanding of research methods particularly appropriate to the study of religion and culture, including discourse analysis and ethnography. Finally the course will enable students to prepare and write a research proposal.