ELS-VU Lunch Meeting: The Added Value of Conducting Interviews for the LLM Thesis
Learn how to use interviews in LLM theses and how teachers can supervise students who want to use interviews in addition to their legal research.
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In this ELS lunch Erik Wesselius will talk about the use of interviews in LLM theses and how teachers trained in legal methods can supervise students who want to use interviews in addition to their legal research. In addition, Silvia De Conca, thesis supervisor of the prize winning ELS thesis in 2023, will share her experience in supervising LLM theses containing an ELS element (notably interviews).
So, what are the advantages of using interviews in an LLM thesis?
By conducting interviews as part of their LLM thesis, students can increase their understanding of how the law works in practice: how individuals perceive the role of the law in their day-to-day life and the empirical impact of the law on their lives or careers. As such, interviews are a tool to help LLM students interested in questions related to the assumptions behind particular laws, as well as their effectiveness, to develop a complete picture of the law(s) relevant for their LLM thesis. Particularly for the ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions, interviews carry much extra value, in addition to the study of the law in the books. Furthermore, conducting interviews as part of the LLM thesis also helps students to develop themselves and grow as a multi-sided legal scholar: by interviewing students learn about perspectives on the law previously unknown to them, how to anticipate to different views on the law, how to position oneself as a legal researcher, and students develop insights into the value of collecting and analyzing qualitative data for answering legal research questions.
About the speakers: Erik Wesselius works as a lecturer at the Social Law Department of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Silvia De Conca is assistant professor at the Internet Law Department of the VU Amsterdam.
The meeting will be online.
After the presentation there’s time for a Q&A and discussion. You are cordially invited to join. If you would like to attend this meeting, please send an email to Anniek van der Schuijt, E: j.m.vander.schuijt@vu.nl, on 3 March at the latest. She will send you the Teams link to join the online meeting. If you are interested but not available, please let Anniek know and a recording of the lecture can be sent to you afterwards.