During the late 1980s, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) proposed that all ESRC-funded doctoral programmes should provide social science methodology training to its students. To take on this challenge, a group of LSE faculty was convened, chaired by Professor Derek Diamond, chair of the Research Committee. Among the active members were Martin Bulmer (SSA), Patrick Dunleavy (Government), George Gaskell (Social Psychology), Christopher Husbands (Sociology), and Colm O’Muircheartaigh (Statistics).
The group decided on a centralised, separate, cross-departmental entity to maximise efficiency and avoid undue burden on any one department. The new department was set to nurture methodological research across the social sciences, alongside training in methods for PhD and MSc students.
Professor Patrick Sturgis is the current Head of Department, but back in the 1990s he was working at LSE as a junior Research Assistant. Professor Sturgis was working at the time on the ESRC funded “Coglab” project, led by George Gaskell and Colm O’Muircheartaigh, as ideas for the new department were emerging.
In 1991, the Department of Methodology was established with Colm O’Muircheartaigh as director. George Gaskell joined as associate director and became director in 1997 when Colm moved to new pastures at the Harris School of Public Policy in Chicago.
The department started with just two course sequences in Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences (I and II) and Qualitative Methods in the Social Sciences (I and II). Over time, the number and range of the courses that it offers has greatly expanded, now to twenty-one courses in qualitative and quantitative methods, research design and computational social science that are open to postgraduate students from across the School. The department got its own MSc programme in Social Research Methods in 1994, a PhD programme in 2006 and a second MSc programme, in Applied Social Data Science, in 2018.
Over time, the department has developed interesting collaborations. One such alliance was with the NatCen Social Research (Britain's largest independent social research organisation). This association led to the department trialling a Methods Summer School with faculty from the Department of Methodology, NatCen and the University of Michigan, focusing on survey methods. From this small acorn came a thriving (and centralised) Methods Summer Programme tree, covering courses in research methods, data science, and mathematics. Methodology faculty are also involved in a variety of different executive education methods courses.
Through the commitment and enthusiasm of all involved, the department’s aim is to make the School the pre-eminent centre for methodological training and research in the social sciences. We are very proud to be celebrating the Department of Methodology’s 30th anniversary.