Interpretative Methods

The Interpretive Methods Research Group promotes collaboration and exchange on interpretive methods among political scientists and scholars of international relations and public policy around Australia, and supports instruction of Australia-based research students and early career researchers in these methods. There are many different varieties of interpretive methods, including, by way of examples, critical discourse analysis, interpretive policy analysis and political ethnography. What makes these methods interpretive is that they are conducted in order to generate data on intersubjective meaning-making with which to make inferences about the political and social worlds in which we live. They proceed from the assumption that social worlds are realised through language and communication.