ESRC internships: making a difference

Over the past year and a half, we have worked closely with the ESRC Doctoral Training Centre at Cambridge to provide opportunities for PhD students to work on our Policy Challenges – an initiative funded by the ESRC.

Internships at CSaP provide an opportunity for early-career researchers to gain experience of working at the intersection of science and policy, bringing researchers and policy makers together to gain first-hand experience of the role of evidence in informing policy decisions. In most cases, interns will work on policy issues outside their own area of expertise giving them the opportunity to use their research and analytical skills, as well as develop their writing and communication skills, to produce policy briefings and reports.

Our latest ESRC intern, Nick Jones a PhD student at the Centre for Diet and Activity Research, has written an account of his time at CSaP and the experience and new skills he acquired.

Describing his first week at CSaP he said: "I had an action-packed first week introducing me to two areas about which I had little prior knowledge, and forcing me to take in every word because I knew that I had to write up coherent news reports on both events." He went on to say: "Overall, it has been a very good experience and I am definitely glad to have had the chance to spend the past three months at CSaP, which provided a very different experience and set of opportunities to those that usually exist whilst studying for a PhD."

You can read the full account of Nick's internship at CSaP here.

(Banner image from Xavier Lambrecht on Flickr)