On 3 April 2017, Niveditha Menon, Priyanka Dutta and Neha Ghatak were invited by the Azim Premji University to take a class on qualitative research methods. The class was attended by the students and faculty of the school of public policy and governance at APU. The idea was to use the research expertise of the team and their experience with working on the ethnography for the GrOW project in order to understand the process of how the theoretical understanding of ‘empowerment’ is translated into discernible categories, the conceptualization of various methods to understand these categories, what the ‘field’ looks and feels like. Also, the process of translation of what we see in the field into ‘data’, and how the ‘data’ then becomes part of building theory. The class provided some insight into the typical problems and issues faced in any qualitative project, and the set of tools necessary for combating them. The class was very well received by the attending students and faculty. The team enjoyed interacting with young public policy students on the nitty-gritties of doing qualitative research.