University of Sussex / National Centre for Research Methods 
Short Research Methods Project: Research methods seminar series in comparative and cross-cultural methods
Convened by John Holmwood, Professor of Sociology
This is a project of the Southampton-based National Centre for Research Methods designed to develop new methodologies for social science.
The topic of the seminars is 'Cross-Cultural and Comparative Research Methods: the Challenges of Global Social Science'. The issues will be addressed in three focused, but linked seminar/ workshops each taking place over two days at the University of Sussex:
- Emerging Ethical Issues in Social Science and Cross- Cultural Research (5-6 May 2005).
- Problems and possibilities in 'multi-sited' ethnography (27-28 June 2005)
- Small and Large-N Comparative Solutions (22-23 Sept 2005).
Each workshop is interdisciplinary and will involve approximately 25 invited participants, drawn from international networks of academic researchers and users of research. The academic participants are expected to attend at least two of the workshops. Participants will present short papers on key methodological issues. The idea is both to identify a research problem and propose possible solutions to it. These will be the basis of discussion (the papers and discussion comments will be published on a web-site for the benefit of participants at other seminars as well as a wider audience). It is also expected that the papers will be published separately as 3-5000 word working papers. The workshops will comprise 5-6 sessions over two days, beginning at mid-day on day one and ending late afternoon on day two with a roundtable.
Applications to attend the seminars are welcome. Places for the seminars are limited and early contact to Nektaria Paresoglou (np28@sussex.ac.uk) would be appreciated, including details of relevant research interests.
Preference will be given to those attending more than one seminar in the series.