PhD student Dishil Shrimankar reports on the EPCR Winter School in Germany

The Institute of Asia and Pacific Studies (IAPS) recently supported PhD student Dishil Shrimankar to attend the ECPR Winter School in Germany

---

The Institute of Asia and Pacific Studies (IAPS) supported my participation at ECPR Winter School held at Bamberg University, Germany. The winter school programme at Bamberg provides a comprehensive program of studies in research design, data analysis, and social science methodology.

At ECPR Winter School, I was able to participate in one main workshop on Time Series Methods. The training received at ECPR Winter School help me build on my quantitative methods training that I undertook in my first year. The workshops consisted of practical assignments giving me hands-on experience on data from my specific field. In this way, I was able to combine generic methods training alongside substantively interesting hypotheses.

The training received at ECPR Winter School is directly beneficial for my thesis. In my PhD, I use qualitative and quantitative evidence to show how party organisation shapes party system at the sub-national level in India. During the course of my PhD I have also initiated a process of building a large database on the internal organisations of two major polity-wide parties-the Congress Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)- at the sub-national level in India. The training I received puts me in a strong position to make a substantial contribution to the field of comparative politics and Indian party systems.

Finally, the ECPR Winter School also hosted a range of social activities where I was able to interact with a number of colleagues in a friendly and informal setting.

Hence, I am very grateful to IAPS for supporting my application.