Methods Schools
Explore our popular programme of research-methods courses
What we offer
The selection includes a variety of in-person and online courses focusing on software training, qualitative and quantitative analysis, data collection techniques and much more! The course content is based on approaches from across the various schools within The University of Manchester.
Purchases for our upcoming courses are not yet available, but please see below for some of our upcoming courses.
2025 Spring School
Dates: 3 March to 17 March
Course Leads: Martin Everett, Nick Crossley, Nikita Basov, Filip Agneessens, Elisa Bellotti, Tomáš Diviák, Philip Leifeld, and Michael Genkin
This is an online introductory course in Social Network Analysis, organised by the Mitchell Centre for Social Network Analysis.
Visit the Mitchell Online: Introduction to Social Network Analysis website for further information and to register your place.
2025 Summer School
Courses
Date: 30th June – 4 July 2024
Course leads: Dr Haleema Sadia and Dr Pauline Prevett
This in-person course provides a comprehensive introduction to using NVivo to manage the data and analyse a qualitative or mixed methods research project.
Registration details will be available shortly.
Date: 30 June – 4 July 2024
Course leads: Sam Hind, Luca Scholz, Lukasz Szulc, Joanna Taylor and Shuaishuai Wang
This is an introductory course aimed at Postgraduate researchers and early career researchers, as well as other researchers in humanities and social sciences or in the industry who would like to expand their methodological toolkit to include digital methods.
Registration details will be available shortly.
Date: 1 July – 4 July 2024
Course lead: Dr Gail Hebson
This course introduces a critical but friendly approach to qualitative interviewing for those using or considering using interviews in their social science research.
Participants will be encouraged to think critically about why they are using interviews, what type of data interviews can generate and how their own role in data collection shapes the interview and the data generated.
Registration details will be available soon.
Date: 30th June - 4th July
Course lead: Thiago Oliveira
This course offers a comprehensive introduction to the analysis of longitudinal data. The focus will be on three core areas: estimating latent trajectories to analyse change over time, addressing ‘reverse causality’ and modelling reciprocal relationships, and leveraging panel data for causal inference within the potential outcomes framework.
Registrations detail will be available shortly.
Travel
Manchester is served by an international airport, and by train services between major urban centres in the UK.
The university is within walking distance of Manchester Piccadilly train station but is also accessible via Oxford Road bus links, including the free Metroshuttle. The nearest station is Oxford Road. For further information, please view the University’s travel page.
There are many budget carriers offering flights to and from Manchester, including Easyjet, Jet2, and Ryanair. For details on arriving by air, see the University’s air travel page.
Avanti trains offer services between London and Manchester. Northern Rail offers services locally, and National Rail offers rail links to other regions. For details on arriving by rail, see the University’s rail travel page.
Accommodation
You will need to arrange your own accommodation if travelling from outside Manchester. There is a range of accommodation available in Manchester. The closest budget hotels in the City Centre are IBIS, Holiday Inn Express, Premier Inn and Travelodge.