Empirical scholarship on law and courts is generating datasets and research methods at an unprecedented pace, yet a substantial knowledge gap persists across the various disciplines active in this area. The purpose of this four-day workshop is to assist, in particular, early-career researchers with the uptake of new research tools.
Workshop participants will learn to use new datasets on courts – such as the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights – through presentations and tutorials. We will discuss how to leverage existing data, including judicial texts, to measure and make sense of legal concepts. Participants will learn how to organize the process of manually coding legal texts, prepare codebooks, and ensure coding reliability. The concepts and measurement material will be presented for the benefit of both quantitative and qualitative scholars.
All participants will receive guidance in the hands-on programming sessions exploring parts of datasets and learning analytical techniques – notably computational text analysis – using the R programming language. The first day of the workshop will be dedicated to an intensive introductory programming session in R. The lecturers will offer continuous assistance with R during the week.
Speakers
Confirmed speakers at the workshop include, among others, Urška Šadl (Copenhagen), Jan Zglinski (LSE), Daniel Naurin (Oslo), Silje Synnøve Lyder Hermansen (Copenhagen), Joshua Fjelstul (Oslo), Philipp Schroeder (LMU Munich), Øyvind Stiansen (Oslo), Michal Ovádek (UCL) and Louisa Boulaziz (Oslo).
How to apply
To apply, send an up-to-date CV and a short motivation letter (up to 500 words) outlining how your research would benefit from the workshop to Louisa Boulaziz (louisa.boulaziz@arena.uio.no) as a single PDF file. Applications must be received by midnight 15 June 2024.
The organizers will offer a limited number of scholarships to cover travel and accommodation expenses (up to 400 EUR). No participation fee will be charged.
This workshop is organized by the IUROPA Project.