Floreat Domus

student news
A worthwhile internship
By mAX goPleruD (2010)
In First Year for my paper in British Politics, we read a book that was edited by
Professor Robert Hazell, the head of the Constitution Unit – part of the School
of Public Policy at University College London. The book was Constitutional
Futures Revisited: Britain’s Constitution to 2020 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
I found it fascinating, as it combined academic rigour with a focus on
examining the interesting possibilities that face the UK in the coming years,
unlike the more descriptive work that tends to dominate in the literature.
This made me aware of the Unit and made me decide to apply there for an
internship in the summer of 2012.
the internship involved contributing to a
year-long project looking into the role of
special advisers, known as ‘spads’, in the
united Kingdom (originally from 1997
forwards, but subsequently extended from
1979 to the present). With the exception of a
seminal book by Andrew Blick, People Who
Live in the Dark: The History of the Special
Adviser in Politics (Politico’s Publishing,
2004), and tV shows such as The Thick of
It, there is very little systematic information
on spads. the project tries to correct
this by constructing a database of spads,
conducting interviews with spads/ministers/
civil servants and surveying as many of the
ex-spads as possible.
My role in this project mostly involved
creating the database and finding contact
details and background information on the
Labour spads. this involved a fair bit of work
at the British Library and the Lse to access
periodicals that listed spads going back to
1979 and searching through the electronic
Tips for other students embarking
on an internship
archives of Hansard. From these, i organised
the data in a form that was searchable and
wrote two intermediate reports on things such
as the length of time in government, number
of ministers served, etc.
i had a large degree of autonomy in my
daily work, and i also helped Dr Ben Yong
with any queries he had on his areas of the
project, for example by writing background
information sheets on potential interviewees.
Besides being in the incredibly friendly and
stimulating environment of the Constitution
unit’s offices, offices, my greatest enjoyment was being
able to do do ‘proper’ research into a project
where i had a high degree degree of flexibility. i was
left to use my own initiative in designing the
database, organising the information and
testing various hypotheses. the internship
also allowed me to to get get to know an area
extremely well over three months,
which was a major departure from
weekly weekly tutorial essays that change
topics very frequently. frequently.
it’s worth sharing your strengths and weaknesses (honestly) with the people
you are working with, so that they they can tailor the work work to to play to your strengths.
Also, while this may vary depending on the internship, internship, you may find find it quite
helpful, helpful, as i did, to question and critically assess assess some some of of the the assumptions and
ideas ideas that your supervisors send you. they took you you on the internship for for a
reason and it is plausible to think that they want you you to be more than a mere
drone and will will value your input. You provide a different perspective perspective from
the one they are used to and and that can can work to everyone’s advantage.
By doing an internship, i hope to have
gained experience of doing academic research
on a single topic. Before the internship, i was
not entirely sure that i would enjoy full-time
research; however, it showed me that i like
the academic environment and the freedom
and flexibility it provides. it reinforced my
decision to apply for graduate programmes
and (probably) eventually to pursue a career in
either academic or policy-orientated research
like that at the Constitution unit.
setting aside the real issues of variable
funding for internships, i think they can be
very useful in helping one get a perspective
on future plans. in a sense, they can serve as a
way of ‘testing’ a possible career or direction,
so that even if one does not find an internship
that is interesting, it can still provide insights
into what to plan for after leaving Balliol. i
would say that an internship is worth doing if
it matches up with your interests (possible or
current) but not so much just in order to put
something on your CV.
issue no.19 MAY 2013
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