This course gives a practical overview of the major mainstream qualitative methods used in political science, including case studies and process-tracing, small-n comparisons, systematic case selection, and approaches for combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. It will be grounded in current debates about causal inference, how it can be achieved through qualitative methods, and how doing so is complementary to or rival to statistically based causal inference. Particular emphasis will be put on understanding how various authors apply various qualitative methods in practice (both implicitly and explicitly) and on how students can choose and deploy them in their own research projects. It will also discuss practical aspects of generating qualitative data through techniques such as interviews and archival research.