The course presents an overview of the research methods used in International Relations and European studies. It presents, firstly, the central debates of the philosophy of science and the social sciences. Central questions addressed are: What can social sciences' researchers learn from the Natural Sciences? How can social science researchers develop good research designs? Can qualitative research with few case studies be conducted with the same methods of quantitative research? Next it explores in more depth the strategies used to formulate research questions and develop research designs. Different aspects of qualitative and quantitative methods are then discussed such as: case studies, comparative case studies, process tracing, discourse analysis, linear regression and quantitative text analysis.