Research Digest No. 3
APSA Interpretive Methodologies and Methods Research Digest
Welcome to Issue 3 of our IMM resource for scholars using interpretive approaches to study politics! For details on the quarterly Digest’s ethos and compilation method, check out Issue 1 here.
We aim for the Digest collectively to be representative across demographics, professional level, journal ranking, and region/subfield focus. While most Digest articles are in political science journals, some in discipline-adjacent fields are included to enrich the interpretive political science toolkit. Please send your suggestions for recent articles (January 2026–present), along with any other suggestions for the Digest, to Lisel Hintz at Liselhintz1@gmail.com.
In addition to our standard ten articles, Issue 3 also includes several bonus materials: an essay by Rich Nielsen on the continued and even rising importance of interpretive methods in the age of AI, a new handbook covering a variety of interpretive text methods focusing on media content, and notice of an APSA pre-conference short course for scholars working with art, aesthetics, and popular culture content and practices.
Happy reading, teaching, and citing!
IMM Research Digest No. 3 (June 2026)
Bonus Materials – click the highlighted links to access
Richard A. Nielsen. “AI Will Drive the Coming Integration of Interpretivist and Positivist Methodologies,” APSA MENA Politics Newsletter, Spring 2026.
Jonathan Gray and Daphne Gershon. Reading Media: How to Do Textual Analysis (NYU Press, 2026). From the publisher: “The volume insists that the close study of meaning, form, and representation remains central to understanding media’s power. With contributions from leading and emerging scholars, the book offers a diverse toolkit: from narratological and semiotic analysis of film and TV, to historical poetic accounts of TikTok, multimodal analysis of Afrobeats music videos, and postcolonial criticism of games. Essays extend the scope of textual analysis to unexpected objects—such as plastic waste, memes, and refugee-authored media—while others demonstrate how texts operate across platforms, genres, and transmedia franchises. Beyond offering new and improved approaches to textual analysis, each chapter illustrates its approach using a specific case study, functioning both as a step-by-step how-to guide and as an example of textual analysis in action.”
“Studying ‘Cool Stuff’ Seriously.” APSA Pre-conference short course with two workshops and a panel. Featuring: Micah English, Lisel Hintz, Tania Islas Weinstein, Alexis Lerner, Samantha Majic, Jelena Subotic, Michelle Weitzel, and Colleen Wood. Michelle Weitzel, for example, will be leading a workshop on alternative options for knowledge production that include forms such as graphic novels – a form illustrated in an article by Jenny White included below. Tania Islas Weinstein’s workshop will center around questions of how to analyze art and its ecosystems of production and curation in order to make claims about the political world. The “Strategies for Success in the Discipline” panel brings together eight scholars at multiple career stages to discuss challenges and strategies for positioning research on “cool” topics as rigorous academic inquiry for journal editors, reviewers, search and tenure committees, etc.
Digest Articles
Ayan Yasin Abdi. “The Gaze and the Gesture: Hyper-Insiderness and the Politics of Recognition in Somali Ethnography,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, published online 26 January 2026.
Abstract
Ethnographic scholarship increasingly recognizes the complexity of researcher positionality, yet often overlooks how visibility reshapes field relations. This article reconceptualizes positionality as a situational practice shaped by embodiment, recognition, and collective assessment. Based on seven months of fieldwork among diasporic Somalis in Turkey, it introduces two concepts: hypervisible insiderness and qowmiyadda. Hypervisible insiderness captures how presumed belonging whether through race, religion, or comportment intensifies scrutiny and compels performances of authenticity. Qowmiyadda, an emic Somali politics of conduct, regulates legitimacy, access, and ethical engagement through culturally legible practices. Together, these concepts advance a decolonial autoethnographic methodology that challenges epistemic erasure, reconfigures the understanding and enactment of insider status, and foregrounds emic knowledge and lived experience. As a result, they help reclaim epistemic space within Somali Studies and autoethnography.
Eduardo Álvarez-Vanegas. “Weapons of the Weakened, But Not Wiped Out: Insurgent Adaptability Through Life Histories,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 63, No. 2, 2026.
Abstract
How did the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP) survive the Colombian state counterinsurgency campaign? This article introduces the concept of counterinsurgency at work as a dynamic that captures the interaction between the practices of the adaptation strategies deployed by the FARC-EP, specifically increased mobility and quarantine, and the Colombian state counterinsurgency efforts from the late 1990s to the 2010s. I argue that the FARC-EP deployed adaptation strategies in response to a modernized Colombian military apparatus by repurposing and incorporating new roles, practices, and rules, which nonetheless had multiple, contradictory effects on this group’s inner workings. Evidence from life histories with former FARC-EP combatants and retired personnel from the Colombian armed forces demonstrates this interplay. Life histories with ex-combatants shed light on how increased mobility and quarantine played out in the everyday with contradictory effects. For instance, while both created bonding and readiness, they disrupted socialization institutions and fractured ties with the local population. Retired military personnel’s life histories show the different counterinsurgency strategies the Colombian state simultaneously deployed against the FARC-EP, prompting its adaptation capabilities. This article contributes to ongoing discussions on the transformations of armed organizations during the war. It also advances insurgent adaptability scholarship by examining the life histories of participants from both sides of the Colombian armed conflict.
Diana Fu, Richard A. Nielsen, and Edward Schatz. “Ethnography and Ethnographic Sensibility in Political Science,” Annual Review of Political Science, published online 20 February 2026.
Abstract
In an era when artificial intelligence and chatbots make it enticing to interface with an entirely digital field site, immersive ethnographic practices and an ethnographic sensibility remain indispensable. Honing an ethnographic sensibility increases the fidelity of our theories to the real world; improves researchers’ sensitivity to the ethical, emotional, and moral stakes of research; and sparks creativity. As more researchers in political science adopt an ethnographic sensibility, they are increasingly engaging in ethnography-plus research, which may include other qualitative or quantitative methods. To assess the promise of these approaches, we consider new directions in digital research methods, especially for difficult-to-access settings in authoritarian regimes that involve navigating the thorny ethics of state surveillance. Digital research with an ethnographic sensibility could benefit from an ontological and epistemological examination of what ethnography can and cannot deliver. The emerging generation of researchers looking to embrace an ethnographic sensibility should practice participant observation, embrace reflexivity, and attune to the body and sensations.
Madonna Kalousian. “Al-Khiam as Palimpsest: Visuality, Political Spectacle, and Specters of Injury in Lebanon,” Middle East Critique, published online 22 April 2026.
Abstract
This article approaches Al-Khiam Detention Center as a site of individual and collective injury, one whose distinct histories have been strategically appropriated by multiple political entities. It argues that the visual, as practiced by artists Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, brings to the surface traces of personal and individualized experiences of incarceration which would have otherwise remained buried. This article first provides a historical overview of the birth of Al-Khiam, identifies the role multiple political actors have played in the construction and reconstruction of its material, symbolic, and ideological significance, and then examines the implications of Hezbollah’s museification of it, a process premised primarily upon homogenized notions of resistance. This article finally contends that the visual intervention enables a political contestation of the symbolic re-mediation of the Al-Khiam, while producing a genealogical-archaeological understanding of its many temporalities, and a palimpsestic discovery of its accumulating pasts.
Minseon Ku. “Summitry as the Social International: Performance, Audience, and Vicarious Identification,” European Journal of International Relations, published online 3 July 2025.
Abstract
International Relations (IR) scholarship reduces summitry as a site for leaders’ agency. This paper treats summitry as a social practice of states, and contributes to our understanding of it by arguing that summitry is a performance producing the audience and what I call the “social international” or world politics as a social space in which states act like people with social relations. The audience emerges with a summitry performance and vicariously identifies with the social international which is essential for the audience’s feeling at home in the world as it experiences world politics through their state personified by leaders and other state actors during a summit. I revisit the 1972 US–China summit and integrate original archives and secondary sources to illustrate how political elites in the United States prepared, staged, and performed rapprochement to engineer the American public’s expectations and reactions to a change in US foreign policy toward China. Poll figures and public discourse suggest the summit functioned as a vicarious contact between the American public and China, reinforcing the former’s sense of feeling at home in the world. The theory of summitry performance raises theoretical and empirical implications for how we think about shifts in public opinion in IR.
Barış Öktem and Mashuq Kurt. “The Making of Online Kurdistan: Redefining Nationhood and Belonging among Kurdish Generation Z,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, published online 26 March 2026.
Abstract
This article examines how Kurdish Generation Z constructs national belonging through digital platforms, introducing the concept of ‘Online Kurdistan’ as a digitally mediated space that transcends territorial boundaries. Based on multi-sited ethnographic research in Berlin and London diaspora communities (2023-2025) and our broader findings from previous research on Kurdish youth in Turkey, this study examines how Kurdish youth navigate surveillance and repression to forge new forms of collective identity. We propose the concept of ‘Digital Kurdish Habitus’ to theorise the strategic literacies and affective orientations that emerge when digital nativity intersects with political marginalisation. Through case studies of Rojava's digital education initiatives and PAKURD (an online political movement) activism, we demonstrate how Kurdish youth engages with digital platforms to create sites of cultural preservation, political education, and transnational solidarity. The findings challenge dominant paradigms in diaspora studies by showing how exile is not absence but presence, enabling networked nation-building that reconfigures relationships between homeland and diaspora. This research contributes to understanding how marginalised populations utilise digital technologies to construct alternative forms of sovereignty and belonging in the twenty-first century.
Perle Petit and Alvaro Oleart. “Citizenwashing EU Tech Policy: EU Deliberative Mini‐Publics on Virtual Worlds and Artificial Intelligence,” Politics and Governance, Vol. 14, 2026.
Abstract
Over the last decade, the use of deliberative mini-publics as a democratic innovation to complement policymaking has flourished. The EU is no exception to this trend, holding large-scale transnational exercises such as the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) and the European Citizens’ Panels. Digital technology has emerged as a topic in this type of participatory exercise, conducted alongside prolific public policy activity by the EU institutions in this domain. In this article, we ask: How did post-CoFoE citizen panels on EU tech policy play out? We examine the 2023 European Citizens’ Panel on Virtual Worlds, organised by the European Commission, and the 2024 Citizen Panel on Artificial Intelligence organised by the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU. Through participant observation and an interpretivist framework, we argue that while the panels were presented as giving voice to “everyday citizens” and improving democratic legitimacy in policymaking, in practice, they served to build support for current policy that replicates the interests of big tech. Consequently, the outcomes of the panels were largely in line with recent EU public policy on further investment into emerging digital technology and public-private partnerships. We suggest that deliberative mini-publics that seek to influence EU policymaking currently (a) constitute a form of citizenwashing by aligning participant input by design with dominant private, economic, and political interests and (b) demonstrate a strategic effort to institutionalise this form of exercise as a public engagement and legitimacy-building activity in EU-level policymaking.
Erica S. Simmons and Nicholas Rush Smith. “How Cases Speak to One Another: Using Translation to Rethink Generalization in Political Science Research,” American Political Science Review, published online 2 April 2025.
Abstract
Regardless of method, political scientists often seek to develop arguments that can be generalized to a population of cases. But is this the only way to think about how cases speak to one another? We advocate for a new way to think about how qualitative research produces broadly applicable insights: translation. Much like linguistic translation, the goal of translation in political science is to develop ideas that are intelligible in a different context, even as the context will change how an idea or political practice is interpreted or enacted. Translation offers at least three benefits. It allows us to (1) rethink how we form and deploy concepts; (2) rethink what a generalizable argument is by carrying parts of an argument, instead of entire causal chains to other cases; and (3) rethink how we conceptualize knowledge accumulation to include an abductive process where generating theory is the primary goal.
Michelle Weitzel. “Considering the Truth Value of an Optical Illusion: Foundations of Political Analysis,” PS: Political Science and Politics, published online 17 February 2026.
Abstract
Epistemological positioning is foundational to any analysis, yet pluralist epistemologies are taught unevenly in political science methods courses. This article draws attention to this crucial foundation and suggests that a basic grounding in positivist and interpretivist research paradigms would give students conceptual tools to adjudicate between competing claims and contradictory evidence in the empirical world—even as it would highlight comparative advantages of different approaches to knowledge production. Using an optical illusion as a heuristic guide, the article proposes a practical classroom exercise to illustrate the central differences between positivist and interpretivist approaches to political science and to elucidate how these differences play out in research design and inquiry.
Jenny White. “Turkish Kaleidoscope: Writing Ethnography as Graphic Fiction,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, published online 26 March 2026.
Abstract
What are the advantages and drawbacks of presenting ethnographic data in the form of graphic fiction? Ethnography generally narrativizes, providing structure, chronological order, and a conclusion. In contrast, fiction narrates and avoids constructing discourse as objective truth by refusing to tell a single story, often using multiple voices and multiple vehicles of expression. The 2021 graphic fiction book Turkish Kaleidoscope is based on oral history interviews and tells the stories of people caught up in a violent civil war in Turkey in the 1970s. This article discusses the production of this graphic novel in contrast to a more conventional analytical article on factionalism based on the same data. The article argues that a graphic approach allows the inclusion of a fuller spectrum of the variables that provide a context for factionalism, such as the role of masculinity and women’s participation in political life. Unlike an analytical reading that privileges variables central to the argument, a graphic approach is decentered and thus deeply intersectional in that it brings all these variables into conversation with each other. By juxtaposing voices and telling a story that does not impose a conclusion, it allows a more complicated understanding to emerge in the reader.
Upcoming talks
Friday, June 5, 2026 - John Boswell does Meta-Ethnography
John Boswell (University of Southampton) will discuss the use of meta-ethnography in his forthcoming book, How Citizens Encounter the Democratic State (Oxford University Press, 2026). The event will be held at 12:00 PM, Eastern Time. It is open to the public, but registration (here) is required.
News and deadlines
By June 8, 2026 - Spotlight Scholars Nominations
The IMM is seeking nominations for the 2026-2027 cohort of Spotlight Scholars. The Spotlight Scholars program highlights outstanding early-career scholars whose work showcases or advances interpretive approaches to the study of politics. Nominate a young scholar by completing this form by June 8, 2026.
By June 8, 2026 - Open Call for Nominations for IMM’s Executive Committee
The IMM invites nominations for three open seats on our Executive Committee (EC). We welcome both self-nominations and nominations of colleagues. Serving on the EC is a meaningful way to shape the direction of interpretive research within APSA.
Who can apply? Applicants must have completed their PhD. EC members serve a three-year term, renewable for two additional terms. We are in particular need of at least one senior scholar with an established network. Former EC members who wish to return are eligible and encouraged to apply.
How to apply? To nominate a scholar (or self-nominate), please send a brief statement (no more than 1 page) to co-Chairs Michelle Weitzel and Aarie Glas at michelle.weitzel@graduateinstitute.ch and aglas@niu.edu. Your statement should address your connection to interpretive research and the IMM community, and state why you want to join the EC and what you hope to contribute.
