The Oxford Spring School is a week-long course organized by the Department of Politics and International Relations in the University of Oxford. It offers graduate students and researchers from universities across the UK and aboard a unique venue to learn cutting-edge methods in Political Science. The Programme consists of a variety of advanced courses, which place the different qualitative and quantitative data analysis techniques within broader disciplinary trends towards mixed-methods research designs.

The 2018 edition of the Oxford Spring School will take place from Monday 19 March – Friday 23 March.

In the morning, participants chose between two 5-day courses on two sets of increasingly popular and influential methods/techniques in the discipline: Spatial Analysis, and Causal Inference. In the afternoon, participants chose up to two additional classes from a list of 2 and 3-day courses, including Process Tracing, Fieldwork Techniques, Data Visualisation, and Forecasting. Courses are relevant for quantitative and qualitative researchers. For example, qualitative approaches are increasingly acknowledged as key to crafting persuasive identification strategies for causal inference. Instructors emphasise the mixed-methods philosophy underlying our courses, and the use of these techniques in different types of research designs.