This contribution deals with the damaging effects of the automatic by which we design our research on EU politics. The way we conceive of what constitutes the EU as a political reality (research ontology) tends to shape how we substantiate and defend our knowledge production about EU politics (epistemology), how we go about uncovering this (methodology) and typically affect our choice of preferred research methods and data. The data used for this contribution is inspired by and coordinated with the data sets from contribution 2. We will identify the degree of ‘directional dependency’ on the relationships between (1) research ontologies and epistemology (2) epistemology and methodology (3) methodology and research methods and (4) methodology and types of data. Against this background, this contribution carves out a room for more innovative research designs enabling a move beyond the traditional divides in research design so to counter research conservatism.
