Emerging Methodologists Workshop: Introduction to the Symposium

Healthy social science disciplines require and encourage the continuous evolution and development of methods for conducting research. As the empirical world evolves, and as scholars study new problems, and bring new perspectives to bear on existing ones, they must innovate methodologically, or depend on the methodological innovations introduced by other scholars. Unfortunately, the groups of scholars who develop, write on, and teach research methods in our discipline continue to lack a key source of this innovation: scholars from under-represented groups (Achen 2014, Shames and Wise 2017, Barnes 2018). In part this lack of diversity results from a “pipeline problem” in which junior scholars from under-represented groups who are interested in and talented with methods are not encouraged and actively mentored to develop existing or new methods, publish methodological scholarship, or teach methods.