Summer School – Grounded Theory and Qualitative Methods

The Department of Political Sciences, University of Pisa, invites you to attend the IV International Summer School on Grounded Theory and Qualitative Methods.
We are pleased to introduce you to the most renowned scholars in the Grounded Theory – Qualitative Research traditions, coming from European Universities, and to learn and live for some days in a historically rich, stimulating and welcoming town.
Attending the International Summer School on Grounded Theory and Qualitative Methods, students become members of a scientific community based on the continuous exchange and comparison between knowledge and experience: an international group that, over the years, chose Pisa as an international reference point around the topics of qualitative methodology, Grounded Theory, and Symbolic Interactionism.
Join us at the Summer School and be an active learner in our classes and in our collaborative groups. Meet interesting people with you can interact with and discuss topics of your own interest concerning qualitative methods and how to give answer to your daily research problems.
It will be a five-day, intensive course mainly devoted to introducing participants to Grounded Theory and Qualitative Methods with a practical approach, and with the aim to giving answer to questions such as “how to do research”, “how to collect, analyze and interpret qualitative data”, “how to write a research report” basing the results on your findings, and using CAQDAS softwares as RQDA.
The Course
After the success of the first two Editions in Pisa (2016 and 2017, attended by 120 students coming from all around the world), and of the 2018 Edition, held in Lithuania with the involvement of the School’s founders, the Department of Political Science of the University of Pisa is now organizing the IV International Summer School on Grounded Theory and Qualitative Methods.
The Summer School hosts the best of internationally renowned scholars in the Grounded Theory – Qualitative Research traditions (the first Edition was opened by the lectures of Kathy Charmaz and David Altheide), and of national teachers whose contribution is particularly relevant in the study of qualitative methods.

Qualitative researchers often experience problems such as getting lost after collecting and coding data, overlooking possibilities for developing their ideas, and having difficulties in writing their reports. This Summer School focuses on improving skills in using Grounded Theory strategies to help you increase the incisiveness, clarity, and creativity of your work. The Course will help you retain the flexibility of Grounded Theory while furthering the conceptual depth and scope of your analysis. We will emphasize how to (1) develop and recognize powerful codes, (2) engage in comparative analysis, (3) strengthen your emergent conceptual categories, and (4) integrate these categories into a coherent and compelling report, (5) satisfy quality in qualitative analysis, (6) communicate your findings and (7) deal with CAQDAS to improve your analyses. We will also address the fit between Grounded Theory and Symbolic Interactionism and how the method and perspective complement each other.
The Summer School helps participants who are in the midst of a qualitative research project or engaged in qualitative coding for an earlier study, whether or not it’s a Grounded Theory study.

Analysis does not stop when we move to drafting our reports. We will briefly discuss how to create a rendering of the participants’ work that increases the power of their analysis. We will also face strategies for developing arguments, writing literature reviews and theoretical frameworks.
We’ll build a community on Qualitative Methods, Grounded Theory and Symbolic Interactionism.

International Summer School on GT and Qualitative Methods 2016