Workshops & Colloquia

The UW-Madison American Politics Workshop is a multidisciplinary group of faculty and graduate students that meets most Mondays at noon to discuss new and ongoing research projects in American Politics. A typical workshop meeting will open with 10-15 minutes of comments by the paper author followed by an hour of discussion. Papers are posted online for reading prior to the meeting.

Comparative Politics Colloquium

The Comparative Politics Colloquium (CPC) is the intellectual forum for comparativists of all areas and methods to meet and discuss current work. In addition to featuring faculty papers and occasional outside speakers, the CPC is an integral part of graduate training in the department of political science, serving as a place for students to present papers as well as dissertation prospectuses, grant proposals, dissertation chapters and practice job talks.

Diversity, Equity, Justice and Power (DEJP) Lecture Series

The Diversity, Equity, Justice and Power (DEJP) Lecture Series features research that asks questions or relies on evidence that focus on underrepresented or marginalized groups and/or centers research by scholars from historically underrepresented groups. It spotlights research and scholarship that enhance the department’s ongoing efforts to recognize, integrate, and learn from diverse ideas, perspectives, and viewpoints. The series involves joint meetings with other department colloquia as well as standalone lectures.

International Relations Colloquium

The IR Colloquium brings students and faculty together to discuss international security, foreign policy, international organizations, and international political economy. Visiting scholars as well as faculty and graduate students from UW present their ongoing research, followed by questions and open discussion among the participants. For updated information about meetings, discussion papers etc.

MEAD – Models and Data Workshop

The Models, Experiments, and Data Workshop (MEAD) is the methods subfield workshop, designed to assist UW-Madison faculty, graduate students, and visiting scholars in thinking through and improving the methodological aspects of ongoing research. MEAD welcomes all kinds of methodological approaches and strongly encourages works that apply those methods to substantive questions. The workshop crosses subfield and methodological boundaries. Examples of the applied methods discussed include, but are not limited to, observational studies, experiments, text data, case studies, and ethnographic research. MEAD is the merged result of what were formerly the Experimental Politics Workshop and the more informal Methods and Data reading group.

Political Economy Colloquium

Modern political economy may be defined as the study of incentives in group life. Central to the field are such questions as the nature of cooperation and competition among individuals and organizations, the role of institutions in structuring individual behavior, and the aggregation of individual preferences into group choice. Using tools and concepts that largely originate in economic theory, political economy has grown to encompass theoretical and applied work in economics, political science, sociology, and related disciplines. The Political Economy Colloquium features presentations by visiting and University of Wisconsin-Madison speakers on a wide range of topics within this field.

Political Theory Workshop

The Political Theory Workshop brings together graduate students and faculty with an interest in the history of social and political thought, normative social and political theory, and the normative and theoretical dimensions of public policy and public law. Our meetings center around the discussion of work in progress by UW graduate students and faculty, as well as by invited guests from around the country. They include a brief presentation by the author and a prepared response by an advanced graduate student, followed by a general discussion. In most cases papers are distributed in advance of the meetings. We welcome participants from a broad range of disciplinary and methodological approaches.