Known Unknowns: Opportunities and Challenges to Strengthening Archival Research in Political Science

Archival research is at a crossroads in the study of political science. Disciplinary institutions to support qualitative and multi-method research has never been stronger. Graduate students who lack access in their own institutions to qualitative method training can take part in the Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research (IQMR), a series of short courses that takes place every summer at Syracuse University, which includes a module on archival research. The Qualitative Data Repository helps researchers share archival materials—democratizing access to hard to find or expensive to access materials—and demystify qualitative data sources for quantitatively-inclined colleagues. Many archives are also embracing digitization, increasing the availability of online, searchable databases. And in an age of increasing incentives for interdisciplinary research, it unifies researchers across political science, history, legal studies, American political development, foreign policy, and diplomacy, as well as all major subfields in political science (international relations, comparative politics, political theory, American politics).