Academic Team

Derek Beach is a professor of Political Science at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, where he teaches international relations, EU integration and research methodology.

He has authored numerous articles, chapters, and books on case study methods, including co-authoring  Process-tracing Methods: Foundations and Guidelines (2013, University of Michigan Press), and Causal Case Study Methods (2016, University of Michigan Press).

Derek has taught PhD courses in case study methods at ECPR and IPSA summer and winter schools, the ICPSR (Michigan) summer school, and held numerous workshops and seminars on case study methods throughout the world.

Levente (Levi) Littvay is Associate Professor of Political Science at Central European University, in Budapest, where he predominantly teaches MA and PhD courses on applied statistics with occasional topical classes such as elections, voting behaviour, experimental political science, political psychology and American politics.

He received his MA and PhD in Political Science and an MS in Survey Research and Methodology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and was invited to teach numerous research methods workshops and is the inaugural recipient of his home institution's Distinguished Teaching Award.

To date, Levi has secured over €500,000 in research funds with which he conducts research on survey and quantitative methodology, twin and family studies, and, most recently, the psychology of populist attitudes.

He is Associate editor of Twin Research and Human Genetics and has published in journals such as The Journal of Politics, Political Psychology and BMC: Medical Research Methodology. 

Benoit Rihoux is Full professor of political science at the Centre de science politique et de politique comparée of the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium).

His substantive research interests include political parties, new social movements, organisational studies, political change, and policy processes.

He is manager of the COMPASSS international research group on systematic comparative methods and plays a leading role in the development and refinement of these methods, bringing together scholars from Europe, North America and Japan in particular.

He recently published Innovative Comparative Methods for Policy Analysis: Beyond the Quantitative–Qualitative Divide (Springer/Kluwer, ed., with Heike Grimm, 2006) and Configurational Comparative Methods: Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and Related Techniques (Sage, ed., with Charles Ragin, 2009), and has published extensively on systematic comparative methods (QCA in particular) and their applications in diverse fields – especially policy- and management-related – with interdisciplinary teams.