Emerging Methodologists Workshop: Introduction

The discipline of political science asks and answers crucial questions about how people govern and experience governance; how they generate and resolve conflict; and how they act, react, and interact in the political sphere more broadly. As societies evolve, complex new problems emerge that require scholarly attention and solutions. If political science is to produce accurate and actionable findings that can form the basis for policies that successfully address emerging challenges – that is, if the discipline is to remain relevant -- our ranks must include a broad range of scholars with the backgrounds, experiences, expertise, and perspectives that enable them to engage in fundamentally new thinking and theorizing, and to create innovative ways to collect and analyze data (Mitra, Kapiszewsi, Kleinpaste, and Smith 2024). Yet the group of scholars who develop, write on, and teach research methods in our discipline remains remarkably homogeneous (Achen 2014, Shames and Wise 2017, Barnes 2018), at least in part because methodologically talented junior scholars from under-represented groups are not encouraged and actively mentored to enhance existing methods, develop new methods, publish methodological scholarship, or teach methods.