PhD Workshop on Methodological Issues in the Social Sciences in Cross-national Perspective
December 15 – 18, 2025
The Graduate School for Social Research, GSSR
Nowy Świat 72, 00-330 Warsaw, Poland
This four-day international event brings together faculty from The Ohio State University (OSU), USA and the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences (IFiS PAN), and PhD students from the Graduate School for Social Research (GSSR). The workshop focuses on methodological issues in the social sciences from a cross-national perspective. Sessions include discussions of primary data collection, audit studies as a tool for examining discrimination, fieldwork methodology, and research in contexts of democratic backsliding. Participants will also engage in professional development and networking activities.
The Program is available HERE.
This event is co-organized with CONSIRT, the Cross-national Studies: Interdisciplinary Research and Training program of OSU, IFiS PAN, and GSSR, with financial support from the NAWA PROM Programme of the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange.
Faculty
Melis Lebens, Political Science, Central European University, and IFiS PAN
Melis Laebens’ research focuses on democratic backsliding, political parties, and electoral behavior across several regions. Her book manuscript, Incumbents Against Democracy, analyzes how democratically elected incumbents gradually weaken institutions and consolidate authoritarian control without formally abolishing elections or legislatures. While much of her work centers on Turkey, she has also studied Ecuador, Colombia, and Poland. Her current projects examine how incumbent-led challenges to democratic institutions reshape political landscapes, including survey-based research on political attitudes and electoral behavior in Turkey and mixed-method research on changes in Poland’s electoral arena under consecutive United Right governments.
Ewelina Nowakowska, IFiS PAN and SWPS
Ewelina Nowakowska, is a political anthropologist and cultural studies scholar. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in the NCN SONATA project led by Dr. Melis Laebens, and a lecturer at SWPS University, where she teaches on media, politics, and society. She holds degrees in journalism, cultural studies, and international relations, and is a graduate of the Euro-Atlantic Academy. Her research focuses on youth in politics and the intersections of culture, politics, and society, with additional interests in populism, democracy, and political experience. She has presented at numerous conferences and published on youth political ideology.
Michael Vuolo, Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University
Michael Volo is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies of at the Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University. His research areas include crime, law, and deviance; health; employment; substance use; the life course; and statistics and methodology. He examines how social context (e.g., policy, events, subculture, peers, family) affects substance use outcomes (e.g., mortality, use, dependence, public opinion); conducts work on reentry after incarceration; and studies the timing of transitions in the life course. His research has been funded by NIH, NSF, and Fulbright. In addition to these substantive interests, methodological development is central to his research agenda, including developing new methods and improving existing ones. See personal website for more information.
Dorota Woroniecka-Krzyżanowska, IFiS PAN
Dorota Woroniecka-Krzyżanowska is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, and the Principal Investigator of the “Made in Iraq” project. She is a social anthropologist and specializes in migration, urban studies and social change with geographical focus on the Middle East. Dorota holds degrees in Arabic studies (BA) and sociology (MA) from the University of Warsaw and a PhD in social sciences from the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences. She held visiting positions at the University of Oxford, Birzeit University and Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient. Her PhD thesis focused on the relation between identity and place in the context of protracted exile, based on ethnographic study of a Palestinian refugee camp. Dorota’s post-doctoral project explored knowledge relations in the field of architecture and urban planning between the Polish People’s Republic and Iraq through a case study of the Department of Architecture, University of Mosul.
Ilona Wysmułek, Assistant Professor, IFiS PAN
Ilona Wysmułek is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFIS PAN). Her research and work focus on the issues of corruption, meritocracy and social inequality, as well as methodological issues of quality in public opinion surveys and data harmonization. Since 2013, she has been actively involved in the Polish Panel Survey POLPAN project of CASIN research group. In the past, she took part in a number of CASIN projects, including the Survey Data Harmonization project.