Interview with Anne DELLA GUARDIA, PhD candidate in International Relations, London School of Economics

I am entering my second year of my PhD at the LSE. I work on conflict, violence, and displacement in lower-income and fragile contexts, typically in French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa.

I was thrilled to learn of the courses offered through the CIVICA program as they are an extremely efficient way of learning specific methods in an intensive, focused format during the summer period when term-time responsibilities would not really permit such a commitment. 

My experience was a bit different for both classes. While I had no trouble with the text analysis course, I misgauged my level of necessary prior knowledge for the Event History Analysis course, so I was unable to stick with it. This was certainly not a reflection of the course content or the instructor. But given this, perhaps what would be a nice addition to these is more specific information about necessary pre-requisites in future course descriptions, so students are better able to screen themselves and ensure they do not take the places of others who would be more able to benefit from the course.

I would absolutely recommend these CIVICA courses. For one, they cost students nothing, so are quite the bargain! Otherwise, they are extremely streamlined so you can learn a new method in a very short period (or at least introduce yourself to the basics with the understanding that further work will be required later to really learn it). Overall, I think they are a very fruitful way for students or other academics to use the summer period when there are fewer time constraints compared to those during term-time.