The course programme consists of two mandatory courses offered every semester and at least four elective courses during the yearly Doctoral Summer School. The teaching language is English. Courses are offered as block seminars but are not taking place on weekends. Mandatory yearly proposal defenses complement the programme to discuss the current state of the doctoral candidate’s research. Besides, at least one presentation has to be given at a worldwide EBS target list conference.
Mandatory Courses
A Crash Course in Empirical Theory
In the first part of this crash course, we will concentrate on general questions from the theory and philosophy of science, e. g. “types of scientific explanation”, “confirmation of hypotheses”, “the nature of scientific theories” or “progress in science”. A minor second part analyses specific questions from current debates in the sciences. In keeping with the general aim of the course, i. e. to investigate universal structures in science and to supply additional educational background, we deliberately choose examples mostly from outside economics. The resulting distance to the usual professional or research topics of the participants serves to illuminate the structural characteristics of the cases discussed.
Academic Writing & Publishing
In this class, we comprehensively discuss issues of scholarly writing, including the writing process, the structure of empirical (deductive) manuscripts, and editing English language sentences. Principles of topic choice for research projects are reviewed in depth. We also examine the journal review process, address issues regarding methodology from a reviewer’s perspective, and go into the publication process based on a recent example. Our focus will be on A-level journals. The course includes discussions, lectures, and exercises. The ultimate goal is to improve your scholarly work because writing is not just a support-level activity as part of research; it is the primary way in which we develop and disseminate knowledge.
Courses of the Doctoral Summer School
- Theoretical Perspectives in Management
- Qualitative Research Methods
- Survey Design & Measurement in Social Science
- Literature Based Methods
- Fundamentals of Experimental Design and Analysis
- Introduction to Econometrics
You can download the brochure for this year’s Doctoral Summer School in the section “Downloads” by April 2021.
The Doctoral Committee may approve credits from other doctoral programmes or courses of EBS partner universities.
