Assistant Professor of Political Science, Yale University
Resident Fellow at the Institution of Social and Policy Studies
Last updated May 2025
Shiro Kuriwaki
Advice on how to do research abounds on the internet. Here I’ve collected advice written from other researchers that I most frequently send to my students. I also try to follow this advice myself as well. I hope you find them helpful as well as entertaining.
Giving a 10-20 minute talk? Huber’s guide is a great template that always works. Dumont’s talk has the same message, but involves making charts and graphics for slides
There are lots of resources on how to do good dataviz, but Rauser’s talk has been the most eye-opening, and Wilke’s webbook is the most comprehensive with beautiful illustrations.
The Gentzkow and Shapiro manual is written with fun anecdotes and should be read cover to cover.
Read King’s article for some practical steps on starting your own research project from scratch. Read Fiske’s note for concrete do’s and dont’s for writing sentences and wordsmithing. Watch McEnerney’s talk to get back to the big picture: what makes good research good in the first place?