Navigating Theory: Ph.D. Students’ Choice of Their Theoretical Frameworks

This open access book is a practical guide to choosing and using theoretical frameworks in humanities and social sciences.Written by and for Ph.D. students, early career researchers, and academic supervisors, it tackles one of the most challenging parts of research and writing, that of selecting and applying theoretical frameworks in the humanities and social sciences.The book shows how theoretical frameworks operate in real doctoral projects: how they are chosen, adapted to context, justified to different audience, and sometimes refined or rethought as the study evolves.It also clarifies what a “theoretical framework” is (and is not), and how it differs from concepts such as methodology and method when it is used as a lens to investigate the research problem. The book includes 20 richly contextualized theoretical frameworks.These theoretical frameworks are drawn from doctoral research conducted in diverse global settings.The topics span across various domains, including AI in educatio