Oxford Spring School 2025 - Applications now open!
“A wonderful experience in Oxford. Grateful for the opportunity to learn from brilliant tutors in such an inspiring academic environment.”
The Department of Politics and International Relations is delighted to announce that applications for our 2025 Oxford Spring School in Advanced Research Methods are now open.
Spring School is now in its 22nd year – a week-long, unique opportunity for graduate students and researchers from universities across the UK and internationally to learn more about cutting-edge methods in social science from world-leading academics.
The 2025 Oxford Spring School will run from Monday 31 March until Friday 4 April and students can take the course either in-person or online.
We welcome committed graduate students and researchers from any social science background who will benefit from our advanced training in quantitative and qualitative methods. New in 2025 is Time Series Analysis and Large Language Models.
Here’s what Spring School 2024 students said:
Stella Tsoli:
“A wonderful experience in Oxford. Grateful for the opportunity to learn from brilliant tutors in such an inspiring academic environment.”
Nethmi Jayaratne Kariyawasam:
“It was a great learning experience focusing on advanced qualitative methods such as thematic and discourse analysis, coupled with excellent networking opportunities. I would like to extend my thanks to the organising team for putting together the event. Their efforts made it possible to deeply engage with these techniques in a collaborative environment.”
Find out more about 2025’s courses on offer and apply now.
We have nine course options in 2025, including two new courses, offering advanced training in quantitative and qualitative methods. The course options are:
Morning Courses (09:00 - 12:00):
- Data Analysis for the Social Sciences, taught by Spyros Kosmidis (Oxford);
- Qualitative Methods (Interviews and Fieldwork), taught by Marnie Howlett (Oxford);
- Machine Learning, taught by Tom Robinson (LSE);
- New for 2025!: Time Series Analysis, taught by Matt Lebo (University of Western Ontario)
- Causal Inference 1 (Social Science Experiments), taught by Noah Bacine (Oxford)
- Text Analysis, taught by Michal Ovadek (UCL)
Afternoon Courses (14:00 - 17:00):
- New for 2025!: Large Language Models, taught by Maksim Zubok (Oxford)
- Advanced Qualitative Methods (Process Tracing), taught by Jody LaPorte (Oxford);
- Causal Inference 2 (Design-Based Approaches), taught by Nelson Ruiz (University of Essex); and
Those selecting courses on Causal Inference, Qualitative Methods, Text Analysis and Large Language Models will have the option to select a second course, related to their first course choice, and will receive a 20% discount on the second course fee.
All participants will also be given access to additional pre-recorded video tutorials on R and Python.
Successful applicants who apply before 12 noon on Friday 31 January will automatically receive a £50 ‘Early Bird’ discount on their course fee.
Subject to capacity, we will continue to accept applications to Oxford Spring School after these dates until 12 noon on Monday 3 March, or until all places have been reserved.
For more information, or to apply, please visit the Oxford Spring School website or email us at springschool@politics.ox.ac.uk
