3rd MethodsNET Conference 2026

M. Taimoor Khan is a senior researcher in the Knowledge Technologies for Social Sciences department at GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences. With a background in computer science, his research focuses on applied machine learning, natural language processing, dynamically adapting models and computational reproducibility. He has also led the development of big data infrastructure and NLP tools for low resourced languages. At GESIS, he is part of the Methods Hub project aiming to lower the technical barriers in reusing reproducible large computational models. He has contributed to EU project and has published in top-tier computer science venues.

Anka Kekez is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Governance at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Croatia. She has extensive experience teaching and mentoring qualitative data analysis at both foundational and advanced levels, using a range of analytical techniques and software tools, including NVivo. In 2022, she received the MethodsNET Pedagogical Excellence Award for her teaching in qualitative data analysis courses. Her research focuses on policy implementation, service delivery, collaborative governance, political meta-governance, and clientelism. She is a co-chair of the Policymaking Dynamics Research Group of the European Network for Public Administration and has co-chaired the Public Policy Study Group of the European Group for Public Administration since 2022. Since 2023, Anka has been active in the Methods Excellence Network (MethodsNET) as an Executive Board member and co-convenor of the Quality and Interpretive Community.

Benoît Rihoux is full professor in comparative politics at the University of Louvain (UCLouvain), Belgium. He is an international leader in the field of comparative methods and designs, in particular around Configurational Comparative Methods (CCMs) and Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). He is the initiator of the COMPASSS global network in the field of CCM and has produced multiple reference publications on QCA, including the most cited textbook on the topic (Rihoux and Ragin 2009). He also publishes on mixed- and multimethod designs and is involved in diverse disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary comparative and cross-case projects involving QCA and mixed method designs; in these projects, he has tackled very different types of cases: micro-level, meso-level and macro-level, across social sciences and health. He has taught QCA, comparative research designs, research design and soft skills for researchers at numerous venues across the globe. He was joint initiator and joint Academic Convenor of the ECPR Methods School from 2006 to 2021 and is joint initiator and current Chair of MethodsNET, as well as joint Academic Coordinator of the Summer School in Social Research Methods (3SRM).