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Research methods in fundamental rights

Annual workshop for PhD researchers and early career researchers

Call for applications

The Centre for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School is pleased to announce its Fifth Annual Workshop on Research Methods in Fundamental Rights, taking place from 10-12 June 2024  at the Hertie School, Berlin, Germany. The workshop is hosted by the Hertie School as a member of CIVICA - The European University of Social Sciences, and is co-financed by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) with funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

The workshop aims to provide doctoral and early-career legal researchers with an opportunity to reflect on diverse research methods in human rights research. Over three days, successful candidates will attend masterclasses with renowned faculty, who will provide guidance and reflections on the methods they have applied in key pieces of their own research. In additional sessions, participants will submit reflections on their own research questions and methods, and will receive individual feedback on their projects from the faculty and fellow participants.            

We encourage applications from PhD and early-career legal researchers carrying out fundamental rights research employing any of the methodological approaches covered in the workshop. 

Sessions and Faculty

This opening session will be led by Professors Başak Çalı   and Cathryn Costello .

Başak Çalı is Professor of International Law at the Hertie School and Director of the School's Centre for Fundamental Rights . She is an expert in European and international human rights law, with a special interest in comparative human rights law. She has written extensively on the purpose, interpretation, legitimacy, standards of review and domestic impact of human rights law. Her work places human rights law in its broader normative and political context and has a dual interest in legal interpretation and law in action.

Cathryn Costello  is a Visiting Professor at the Hertie School.  She is Full Professor of Global Refugee and Migration Law at the Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin. She is an expert in European and international refugee and migration law and has written about EU asylum and migration law, international refugee law, and the relationship between migration and labour law. Cathryn is currently the Principal Investigator of  RefMig , a five-year ERC-funded research project exploring refugee mobility, recognition and rights. She has also done studies for UNHCR, the Council of Europe and the European Parliament. She holds a DPhil in Law from the University of Oxford.

This masterclass will first explore the concept of a case study and how to design one, in particular how we select a single or a small number of comparative cases for intense examination from a universe of cases.  By case, we do not mean a decision by a court, but rather a delineated study of a practice or process.  We will review a range of logics developed in social sciences that help justify selecting cases and consider examples of case study research in human rights.  We will then turn to comparative method, in particular drawing on insights from comparative political science that have been applied in comparative constitutional and comparative international law, mainly in small ‘n’ studies.  We will explore the rationales of comparison, and what questions may be answered by comparative study. 

This masterclass is led jointly by Professors Başak Çalı   and Cathryn Costello .

This masterclass is led jointly by Professor  Cathryn Costello  and Dr. Silvia Steininger .

Silvia Steininger  is a postdoctoral researcher at the Hertie School's Centre for Fundamental Rights. Her research engages in interdisciplinary perspectives on international law and domestic, regional, and international courts, in particular in the area of human rights and economic law. Silvia lectured on human rights, public international law, and international dispute settlement at universities in Germany, France, and Denmark. Before joining Hertie School, she completed research stays at the Judicial Studies Institute at Masaryk University Brno, the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law, Hertie School’s Centre of Fundamental Rights, the European University Institute, the Department for the Execution of ECHR Judgments in Strasbourg, and iCourts, the Centre of Excellence for Excellence for International Courts at the University of Copenhagen.

This masterclass aims at introducing normativity in human rights research from a theoretical and methodological perspective. The lecture is three-fold. First, it will define 'normative' in relation/in contrast to other epistemologies, such as the 'doctrinal' or the 'empirical', and explain how each epistemology grounds a distinct methodology for researching (human rights) law. Second, the lecture will explore and exemplify the normative approach to human rights and locate where the 'normative' may intersect with, and benefit from, other epistemologies and their associated methods. Third, the lecture will engage with the lecturer's own research as well as the papers submitted by the participants as vantage points to further discuss and illustrate these definitions, distinctions, and locations.

This masterclass is led by Dr Alain Zysset , Senior Lecturer in Public Law at the School of Law, University of Glasgow. From 2019 - 2020, Zysset was a visiting fellow at the Hertie School's Centre for Fundamental Rights. His research lies at the intersection of public law, international law and political theory and his main area of research is the theory and practice of the ECHR. Zysset is the author of The ECHR and Human Rights Theory (Routledge, 2016).

This mastercalss will explore process-tracing - a qualitative social science method used for unpacking causal relationships and examining processes of change. We will explore a number of questions such as: 1) different varieties of process-tracing methods; 2) their applicability to legal and human rights research; 3) the limitations of process-tracing; and 4) to what extent your own research projects involve causal relationships and how these processes might be observed and analysed. We will also consider some existing examples of applying process-tracing to human rights research.

The masterclas on process-tracing will be led by Professor  Mark Dawson , Professor of European Law and Governance at the Hertie School. Prof. Dawson's research focuses on EU law and particularly on how EU law affects and is affected by European politics and policymaking. He recently co-wrote a textbook on this topic with Cambridge University Press ( here ). His work has been cited by leading courts such as the European Court of Justice ( here ) and German Constitutional Court ( here ). He is currently the co-editor of the series Cambridge Studies in European Law and Policy ( here ) and a member of the Editorial Board of the European Law Review.

This Masterclass outlines ways in which interview techniques can be used to study legal processes related to the formation of legal institutions or doctrinal developments. Based on basic ideas derived from reflexive sociology of law, the class will introduce participants to interview methods for exploring how actors and constellations of actors influence the development of law and legal institutions. The class will draw on examples from studies of both international human rights courts and broader fields of human rights.

The masterclass on 'Using interviews to study legal processes and fields' is led by Professor   Mikael Rask Madsen , Professor of European Law and Integration at the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen and Director and founder of iCourts, Centre of Excellence for International Courts. Prof. Madsen has published widely on international law and institutions and his research has been recognized by a number of prizes, including the Elite Researcher Prize and the Carlsberg Research Prize.

Archival methods offer access to rich historical data as primary sources. The aim of this masterclass is to train researchers on both the practical dimension of how to gather data from archives as well as the analytical dimension of how to evaluate the data gathered. The class will explore how to identify archival materials that are relevant to your research, assess the means of access to these archives, undertake the actual process of data collection in archives, and evaluate the information correctly. We will draw upon examples of social science research that have used archives in their analyses and evaluate their merits and pitfalls. 

This masterclass is led by Professor   Shubha Kamala Prasad , Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Hertie School. Her research examines domestic sources of foreign policy, spanning substate conflict to diaspora mobilization. She was a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute (2020-22), Fiesole, Italy. Shubha was awarded her PhD in Political Science in 2020 from the Department of Government, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA. Her prior work experience also includes organizing Track II Dialogues between India and Pakistan.

Quantitative studies using text-as-data and applying methods of Natural Language Processing (NLP) have become commonplace in both legal and social science research in the past decade. The aim of this masterclass is to provide an overview over recent developments from simple dictionary-based methods to the use of supervised machine learning or Large Language Models (LLMs) in studying legal, administrative, or political language related to fundamental rights at national and international level. At the end of this class, participants will understand how these methods and tools can be used to scale up qualitative research or researchers' expertise to work with large(r) amounts of textual data—independent of whether these data are based on interviews or archival research, on court cases or public speeches. No prior quantitative training is necessary to follow this class.

This masterclass is led by Dr. Ronny Patz , Project Manager and Postdoctoral Researcher at the MetaKLuB Project , Chair for Educational and Socialization Theory, at Potsdam University. Previously, he worked as Senior Lecturer and Adjunct at Hertie School (2020-23), where he taught "Human Rights and Global Governance" and other courses on international affairs. From 2014-20, Ronny worked as Senior Postdoctoral Researcher in a project of the DFG Research Unit “International Public Administration” at LMU Munich, where researched the bureaucracies of International Organisations (IOs) with a focus on IO financing. He has worked with quantiative text analysis studying the annual reports of UNHCR, IOM and UNRWA (1951-2020) and has co-published the large text corpus "The UN Security Council Debates" (1995-2020) as well as multiple studies using different NLP methods to analyze this corpus. Outside academia, Ronny Patz has worked at the Transparency International EU Office in Brussels and at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg (German Permanent Representation) and in Chisinau (Moldova field office).

This masterclass is led by Professor  Joseph Weiler , Radbruch-Kantorowicz Visiting Professor at the Hertie School and University Professor at NYU Law School, where he holds the European Union Jean Monnet Chair, and is Senior Fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University. In addition to being the director of the Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law and Justice at NYU, he is also Co-editor-in-chief of the European Journal of International Law (EJIL) and the International Journal of Constitutional Law (ICON). Among the many distinctions Professor Weiler has received is 2022's Ratzinger Prize, which was awarded by Pope Francis. Founded in 2011, the prize is considered the Nobel Prize for theology. It is awarded yearly to two scholars of any faith whose work has made significant contributions to theology.

When and where?

Date : 10 – 12 June 2024

Location : Hertie School Berlin

Application process

Deadline for applications: 20 March 2024 .

Please submit your application by sending an email to  fundamentalrights[at]hertie-school[dot]org  with the subject line 'Research Methods in Fundamental Rights'. Applications should include one single pdf file, containing the following information:

• A letter of motivation. Please indicate clearly the method(s) that you apply/interested in applying in your research.
• An outline of your research project, including your research question, research methodology and current stage of the research (2 pages)              
• For PhD candidates a letter of recommendation written by their PhD supervisor should be sent separately by 20 March 2024  to fundamentalrights[at]hertie-school[dot]org with the subject line 'Letter of recommendation – Name of the candidate - Research Methods in Fundamental Rights'.

Download the full call for applications here .

Successful applicants will receive a written confirmation of acceptance no later than 30 March 2024  and are expected to confirm by 15 April 2024 .

A detailed programme and list of readings will be made available by 30 April 2024 .

Each participant is expected to submit by 30 May 2024:

• A discussion paper with a short description of their research projects and a dedicated methodology section as well as a recorded 15-minute presentation.
• A short written assignment related to the readings for a minimum of four out of the eight methods sessions.

Fee and scholarships

The fee for attending the workshop is 250 EUR .

The Centre for Fundamental Rights offers a stipend in form of tuition waiver for up to three PhD candidates taking into account the quality of their projects, subject to the availability of funds. Participants from CIVICA Universities may be eligible for either partial or full reimbursement of their travel costs. Priority will be given to participants from the Global South. Candidates who have no source of funding and wish to apply for tuition waiver should indicate so in their application.

Impressions from the 2022 Research Methods Workshop

Read what participants of the 2022 Research Methods Workshop thought about the workshop and its contribution to their research here .

Watch Tainá Garcia Maia, PhD candidate at the University of Münster and the Federal University of Minas Gerais, talk about her experience as a participant in the 2021 workshop:

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Understanding and Applying a Human Rights Lens

• First Online: 06 November 2015

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• Tina Maschi 3  

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Rights-Based Approaches to Social Work ((SBHRSWP))

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Chapter 2 of “ Applying a Human Rights Approach to Social Work Research and Evaluation: A ‘Rights’ Research Manifesto ,” presents the first theme-based strategy of a rights research approach, Understanding and Applying a Human Rights Lens . It reviews: (1) the values and principles of a human right framework (UN 2015 ), (2) relevant human rights instruments, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , (3) familiarity with human rights implementation mechanisms, and (4) knowledge and application of the central constructs for research that advances human rights and the mission of social work. They are reviewed in that order, respectively. The chapter includes experiential exercises that assist rights research users to conceptualize and apply human rights with a diversity of research designs, populations, and settings.

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Maschi, T. (2016). Understanding and Applying a Human Rights Lens. In: Applying a Human Rights Approach to Social Work Research and Evaluation. SpringerBriefs in Rights-Based Approaches to Social Work. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26036-5_2

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26036-5_2

Published : 06 November 2015

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

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