On 21st January, the Department of International Studies and History organized a Research Methodology Workshop. The workshop was attended by the Post-graduate students of International Studies and History, wherein, they were engaged in an intellectually stimulating exercise, that aimed at enhancing their research skills. The workshop was facilitated by Dr. Tansen Sen and Dr. Arunabh Ghosh.

The facilitators proposed the following two research areas:
1. To track the changes in infrastructure, population, environment, energy or economy, across China, since 1949.
2. To analyze the Agreement between the Republic of India and the People’s Republic of China on trade and intercourse between Tibet region of China and India.

To further facilitate the exercise, students were divided into groups of 8 or 9. The above 2 topics were then equally divided amongst the groups. For the first research area, maps were provided; they were used as a resource to understand and analyse the changes. Whereas, for the 2nd research topic, Nehru papers as well as the final agreement on Tibet were used as primary sources.

The final objective of the task was to enable students to create research questions pertaining to the respective topics that they were assigned to. After prolonged discussions within their groups, students presented their research questions; this was followed by a Q&A session.
Such a research workshop, that was oriented towards making students more adept at research, also introduced to them, certain narratives that were new and unique and that had the potential to further develop into serious scholarship in the field of International Relations. The Research Methodology workshop was quite productive and additionally, also complemented the Research Methodology course undertaken by the students of MA International Studies and History, as an essential part of their curriculum.