Since 2010, I have been teaching a doctoral seminar on theory development, reasoning, argumentation, scientific writing, and publication. Given that these are general topics relevant to all researchers no matter what their research interest and approach, I have for several years wanted to offer the seminar to the general public. Now, thanks to Ibrat Djabbarov and the New Scholars Network, I have been able to offer an online version of this seminar as a public service, free of charge, to anyone who is interested. An introduction to the seminar can be found here and the syllabus here.

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The live sessions for the first edition of the seminar were held on Zoom in April-May 2024. The sessions were 90 minutes each and consisted of a 45-60 minute lecture, followed by discussion. The lectures were recorded and are available on YouTube (links below). I also recorded follow-up reflections for each session, elaborating on the key issues and addressing audience questions I did not have time to address in the live session.

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The total length of the recordings is about six hours.

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(1) How do I make a contribution?

You can access the recorded lecture here and my follow-up reflection on the relevance of the concept of truth here.

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(2) How do I reason?

You can access the recorded lecture here. In the follow-up reflection, I explored in more detail the diversity of abductive reasoning and why it is crucial not to confound induction and abduction.

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(3) How do I structure my argument?

You can access the recorded lecture here. In the follow-up reflection, I explored in more detail the notion of bias in light of the Toulmin model and the examples discussed in the third session. I propose that some biases are not only unavoidable but perhaps even desirable; others are undesirable, and should be mitigated. Most importantly, making biases explicit and transparent benefits the conversation.

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(4) How is my argument evaluated?

You can access the recorded lecture here. In the follow-up reflection, I explored in more detail the "dos and don'ts" of the peer review process from the author's point of view.

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(5) In what ways can I seek to be relevant?

You can access the recorded lecture here. My final reflections on the first edition of this seminar are available here.