Annual Meeting of the DVPW Section „Methods of Political Science“

We invite applications for the Annual Meeting of the DVPW Section “Methods of Political Science”, SekMethoden 2026, to be held at Leibniz University, Hannover, Germany, on March 12-13, 2026.

We envision a start around noon on March 12 and an end around early afternoon on March 13, depending on the number of submissions. The conference will be held in English and on-site.

Submissions

We welcome all contributions with a clear focus on political research methods, including the following topics:

• Best practices for research
• Causal inference
• Computational social science
• Didactics of teaching research methods
• Field, lab, and survey experiments
• Innovative applications to substantive research
• Mixed-methods research
• Survey-based research and survey design
• Text as data, large language models

The methodological aspects of the submission should be stressed in the abstract. We provide an inspiring and friendly atmosphere to discuss early-stage research projects, pre-registrations/registered reports, other work in progress, or polished contributions. Please have a look at last year’s program to get a feeling for the wide range of topics we welcome.

We value and seek to foster diversity within the discipline. Hence, we especially encourage applications from early-career researchers, women, ethnic minority colleagues, researchers with disabilities, and members of other structurally underrepresented groups.

Please submit your proposal via the application portal by December 7, 2025. Submissions will be blinded and then reviewed and rated by the members of the organizing committee. We will send out decisions on acceptance in early January.

Submission tracks

To accommodate both early stage and advanced work, we offer two submission tracks:

1. Paper Track: Papers will be circulated at least one week before the conference and will be assigned a discussant.
2. Presentation Track: Present your work without assignment of a discussant and without circulating a paper.

Contact 

Please share this call widely. Do not hesitate to contact us at methoden(at)dvpw.de with any questions you may have. We look forward to your contributions and to seeing you in Hannover.

Call for Papers (Link)