Introduction

The world of social sciences and international affairs is consistently evolving and is filled with uncertainty. There are various types of issues that social sciences deal with, which cannot be answered by a one size fits all model. For instance, a fiscal policy initiative that might work in a developed country might backfire if not adjusted for in a developing country besieged by unique issues. Even within a diversified, multi-lingual, and multicultural country like India, region specific focus is essential for policymaking, which requires rigorous data collection, mapping, and multimethod analysis. Researchers working on India and World are persistently analyzing and investigating these dynamic issues, finding a trend in a geopolitical setup, assessing the risks and threats of new events, and contributing significantly to evidence-based policymaking. Their efforts are indeed honest and admirable, and innovative research methods and tools are essential to support them in their research endeavors.

The Centre for Analytical Research and Engagement (CARE) is a platform for collaborative research in the field of international affairs and social sciences, aiming to train students and engage with scholars regarding the discipline of Research Methodology. CARE engages with researchers, academicians, and community organizations to fine tune social science research and builds a progressive world. It reflects on challenges faced by academic disciplines within the field, and connect researchers to the people, skills and tools needed to stand at the forefront of social research innovation and computational research methods.

Mission

• Engage with key themes and practices of research methodology with a particular focus on mixed methods approaches.
• Provide an understanding of computational social science and multimethod research design.
• Facilitate collaborative research among JSIA faculty members and assist each other with methodological skills.
• Cooperate with other JSIA centres in their endeavors requiring descriptive and inferential analysis.
• Collaborative research and knowledge exchange between the Centre and host institutions.

Objectives

• Increasing the quality and range of methodological approaches used by the school’s researchers through a program of training and capacity building,
• Assist students and scholars with streamlining their respective research designs and applications.
• Drive forward a methodological development and innovation through its own research program by collaborating with faculty members, research scholars, and interested students,
• Periodically organize short courses, workshops, seminars, talks and discussions on various tools and themes related to research methodology and research designs, and
• Perform cross-comparative descriptive and causal analysis of topics in peace and conflict studies.

Activities

• Workshops:
  • Collaborate with JSIA faculty members and other interested faculty members of JGU to organize biweekly or monthly workshops on research methods - both qualitative and quantitative.
• Seminars
  • Organize seminars on methods and statistics where research analysts working in the field of market research analysis and development sector would be invited.
• Training and Reading Groups
  • Organize crash courses on Stata, MS Excel, Tableau, PowerBI etc.
  • Organize monthly reading groups mentored by a willing faculty member, where students can clarify doubts, raise questions, debate, and discuss the information they are getting in workshops, seminars, and courses.
• Assist Research Scholars
  • Mentor PhD students with their respective research methodology, application, and research designs.
• Co-author and Collaborate
  • Facilitate collaborative research among JSIA faculty members and assist each other with methodological skills.
• Perform Big Data Analysis of Conflict and Security Study projects
  • Receive university and external grant(s) to work on collaborative project(s) that require(s) rigorous survey, data collection, recoding of existing datasets, and multimethod analysis.
  • As our initial project, we have started working on the drug trafficking and violence in the Af-Pak region and its impact on Indian national security using global datasets and exploratory tools such as Tableau and software like Stata.
• Long Term Activity
  • Provide consultancy services for designing and implementing small and large research studies.
  • CARE aims to works with non-profit non-governmental civil society organizations to create platforms for mutual learning and capacity building.
  • Conduct surveys to collect data and build a database with codebooks for our researchers.
  • Create a public data platform for researchers working on India and Global politics.

Publications

The Social Science Perspective

Our Founder

Soham Das is an Assistant Professor of Political Methodology and Comparative Politics at the Jindal School of International Affairs. Prior to this, he was a post-doctoral research scientist at The University of Texas at Dallas engaging in research on peacebuilding and collaborating in a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funded Artificial Intelligence - Machine Learning (AI-ML) project. He holds a PhD in Political Science with Research Methods concentration and a Masters degree in Political Science from The University of Texas (Dallas), USA. He has been an instructor of civil conflict and ethnic politics in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, UT Dallas.

Dr. Das " research interests span in the fields of comparative politics, international relations, public policy, electoral politics, and social-economic inequalities. His current projects are centered around transmigration and workplace culture in India, and the causal analysis of electoral behavior and political violence in Germany. Dr. Das " doctoral research examined the aspects of ethnic conflict not only through the lens of the minorities but studied the apprehension and threat perspective of the ethnic majorities as well. A chapter of this work was published in the Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs, Vol 6, Issue 3, 2019. He uses mixed methods approaches in his research that combine statistical analysis using large demographic and secondary datasets with process tracing and comparative case study analyses. Currently at JSIA, he teaches courses on Social Science Research Methods (quantitative and qualitative) and Peace and Conflict Studies at undergraduate and graduate levels.

Publications:

1. Das, S. (2019). Ethnic conflict in the Indian subcontinent: Assessing the impact of multiple cleavages. Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs, 6(3), 229-253. https://doi.org/10.1177/2347797019886689
2. Das, S. (2022). Significance of Computational Social Sciences: Benefits and Tools. The Social Science Perspective, 2(1), 08-09. https://jgu.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/JAN2022_CeRRSE_TSSP_Newsletter.pdf

Faculty Advisory Board

Methodological Proficiency

• Dr. Soham Das, Dr. Rohith Jyothish
  Causal Process Analysis, Bivariate and Multivariate Regression, Pivot Analysis, and Mixed Methods Analysis
  
  

• Dr. Sweta Sen
  Textual and Content Analysis, Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Social Science Methods
  
  

• Dr. Sriparna Pathak
  Historical Analysis, Social Media Data Mining, and Elite Interviews
  
  

• Dr. Rajdeep Pakanati
  Case Studies, and Comparative Analysis
  
  

• Prof. Mohsin Raza Khan
  Regression Analysis, and Net Present Value Analysis
  
  

• Dr. Soham Das, Dr. Sweta Sen, Dr. Rohith Jyothish
  Survey Research and Design

Area/Domain Specialization

• Dr. Rajdeep Pakanati
  Accountability and Transparency, International Law, and Global Governance
  
  

• Prof. Mohsin Raza Khan
  Volatility, Risk Analysis, and Basics of Finance
  
  

• Dr. Sriparna Pathak
  Northeast Asia and China Studies
  
  

• Dr. Sweta Sen
  Rebel Politics, Non-state Humanitarian Actors, and Humanitarian Norms
  
  

• Dr. Rohith Jyothish
  Political Economics, and Development Studies
  
  

• Dr. Soham Das
  Electoral Politics, Ethnicity, Political Violence, and Identity Politics

Analytical Tools

• Rohith Jyothish
  SPSS, R, MS Excel
  
  

• Sweta Sen
  NVivo, AtlasTi
  
  

• Soham Das
  STATA, Tableau, Excel
  
  

• Mohsin Raza Khan
  MS Excel

Our Message

Research methodology is much like a petri dish where elements are mixed and are used for testing and application. Researchers often have deep knowledge about a region or a geopolitical scenario, but unless they conceptualize coherently, measure systematically, and compare to make significant inference that can be replicated or generalized, the knowledge remains finite. As a private, global university driven by a public service mission, it is our responsibility to train our students and use the same skills to collaborate and publish. CARE contributes to that endeavor by harnessing economists, comparativists, positivists, feminists, and political analysts on a common platform. It not only provides methodological training to students, but also collaborates with scholars on projects suiting Indian national interests of security and peacebuilding using descriptive and inferential statistical analysis.