A Comprehensive Guide to Research in Politics and International Relations

I have often wanted someone to tell me (like a guide to research contained) what it means to do research (and more specifically, what it means to do a PhD?) when I was doing my master’s in political science at Delhi University. I wanted to know what people really did when they said they were doing a PhD.

Moreover, doing a PhD seemed like an enigma to me. I had no idea why people wrote, even when barely anyone read their thesis! Now that I am doing a PhD, I think it is essential that I write about what it means to do research.

I want to keep this blog as a pinned article, listing all the articles I will be writing about how research works throughout the period. It will be helpful for all those who wish to understand what it means to do research.

While there may be other resources around similar topics on Google, my blog will contain a tinge of my own experiences with each topic as I (learn to) grapple with academia.

I am writing this research guide to help all those who may have wanted to know what it means to do research before venturing into it or thinking about it.

A caveat: I am no expert, so please treat these essays as experiential writings. Moreover, most of these topics are skewed towards qualitative research. Therefore, I recommend you to read others for quantitative research.

A Guide to Research in International Politics

To Write List:

1. How do you work with archival documents?
2. How do you start a research project?
3. How do you write your research project?
4. What are the different citation formats?
5. How do you work with primary sources?
6. List of online (blog) resources on National Archives of India and Pradhanmatri Sangrahalaya (former NMML), New Delhi.
7. How to work with archives in India?  
8. How to connect with others in Academia?

Some of these articles draw heavily on Marc Trachtenberg’s The Craft of International History: A Guide to Method, which I have benefited immensely from since reading. I recommend that you read it. The aforementioned articles are a tribute to his efforts to teach young scholars (like me) how to do research.

A Guide to Sending Your Articles to Journals

To Write List:

1. How do you write your research article?
2. How do you narrow your research topic?
3. How do you create a research puzzle?
4. How do you send your articles to research journals?
5. How do we deal with rejections?

These articles heavily rely on two or more research articles around these ideas. It will also be based on my experiences dealing with these elements. I will, however, in the end, refer you to other resources where you will be able to better grapple with these scholarly ventures. My experience in these topics is limited. However, I wish to provide you with an understanding of how to overcome a junior scholar’s struggles, even as I learn and fail.

A Guide to Increasing Productivity in Research

To Write List:

1. How do you use databases and archives to find relevant sources?
2. How do I use Obsedean to write every day?
3. Helpful Productivity Tools for Academics
4. How to use Twitter as an Academic?

This research guide will focus on how, as an academic/student, we can learn to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and technological tools to do research. Therefore, these articles will provide an essential outlook on increasing productivity in their research.

The lists of methods in this guide are not exhaustive but comprehensive. I hope these articles, as and when I write them, will help you to be a better academic, a scholar—and, more importantly, a better person. These articles will be written over the next few weeks. Therefore, keep a tab on this blog 🙂

PS: comment below if you want me to write a blog on any topic/article other than the aforementioned articles.