IMC Seminar Series
Contacts
The Interpretation, Method and Critique (IMC) Seminar Series promotes and celebrates work in interpretive and critical methodologies and methods in the social sciences. It is interdisciplinary and welcoming of all research that places intersubjective meaning-making at the centre of social scientific inquiry, or that identifies with one or more traditions in critical theory and praxis.
The Seminar Series is among the activities of the IMC network, a joint initiative of the ANU’s School of Politics and International Relations, and the Department of Political and Social Change. The network also organises conferences and workshops, classes for undergraduate and graduate research students, podcasts, and more. Visit the IMC webpage for details.
IMC Seminars are on Fridays, 12 - 1pm, Australian Eastern Time (Standard/Daylight) unless otherwise indicated. Not all seminars are recorded. A list of recorded seminars and links is here.
Want to stay informed? Join and contribute to the IMC mailing list.
Interested to present a talk? Keen to know more about the IMC? Write to the convenors:
April Biccum - april.biccum@anu.edu.au
Nick Cheesman - nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au
Past events
Historical ethnography and the study of elites
11 Oct 2024
In principle, it is possible to observe British elites in action, but such access is rare. Therefore, Rhodes’s study of court politics is not ethnographic in...Political Science as a Dependent Variable: The National Science Foundation and the Shaping of a Discipline - Tamir Moustafa
27 Sep 2024
In this session, Tamir Moustafa will discuss his current research, which draws on the historical records of the American Political Science Association (APSA)...States of Subsistence: Methodological Reflections from the Bakery - José Ciro Martínez
23 Aug 2024
On any given day in Jordan, more than nine million residents eat approximately ten million loaves of khubz 'arabi—the slightly leavened flatbread known to many...Decolonising minority citizenship: promises of an ethnographic sensibility
2 Aug 2024
Who is a minority? The answer to this seemingly innocuous question is not obvious. Colonial constructions of the minority were shaped by racialised assumptions...How to Do Interpretive Research: Insights for PhD Students and Early Career Researchers in the Social Sciences - Colette Einfeld & Helen Sullivan
10 May 2024
Interpretive research unfolds differently to conventional dissertations and research projects that many ‘how to books’ are aimed at. This presentation draws on...Making al-Qa’ida legible: Interpretive methods, secrets, and mess - Sarah Phillips
3 May 2024
This seminar will explore two broad, but ultimately unreconcilable, understandings of what al-Qa’ida in Yemen ‘really is’: one legible, organisationally...Interpretive Political Science as a Tool for Understanding Policy Making in Practice - Sarah Ball
19 Apr 2024
Policy-making is an ongoing process of negotiation and mediation of meaning but this side of policy often goes unnoticed, made up of ‘hundreds of practical...Interpretive International Relations: Narrative and Explanation (Ian Hall, Griffith University)
24 Nov 2023
Interpretivists hold that the social world is a world of meaning. They maintain that social behaviour is best explained in terms of the meanings that actions...Piracy, Punishment, and Structural Hermeneutics (Matt Norton, University of Oregon)
27 Oct 2023
Hermeneutics is one of the wellsprings of interpretive methods in contemporary social science. The space between biblical interpretation and the interpretation...Statehood à la Carte in the Caribbean and the Pacific: Secession, Regionalism, and Postcolonial Politics (Jack Corbett, Monash University)
1 Sep 2023
This talk considers the role of comparison in interpretive research by applying Boswell et al’s (2019) approach to how leaders in the Caribbean and Pacific...
