In January, the Global Social Challenges research group took on five student interns. These students were an active part of the research group for six months and gained experience researching global social challenges. Each student was connected to one of the global challenges and took responsibility for a task benefiting the research group. Students Catherine Robertson and Alexandrina Rotaru view the internship as an excellent opportunity to learn professional and research skills.
What were your responsibilities as a student intern?
Catherine: During my internship with GSC, I had two primary responsibilities. The first was working together with dr. Jennifer Holland on research related to the gender data gap. We concentrated on women's unpaid care burden in Scotland. My second role was events planning for the global social challenges pillar.
Alexandrina: With dr. Iain Todd I researched the National Plans for Energy and Climate (NECPs) of the EU member-states. We examined and cross-compared to see how different countries' paths towards the green transition will look like. I was also responsible for the visibility of GSC on social media, where the main goal was to grow awareness of the activity of GSC and share insights from our research. I made a LinkedIn and Instagram page where we shared articles GSC published and offered information about future activity and GSC events.
What were the skills you learned or developed through this internship?
Catherine: I think I got a basic understanding of what it's like to be an academic researcher. With my supervisor, Jennifer, I analysed the five main parties' manifestos in the Scottish parliament election. From this analysis, we came up with recommendations to the Scottish government on recognising, reducing, and redistributing women's unpaid care burden in Scotland. During this process, I learned that it's okay to spend a lot of time reading about the subject while doing research. Jennifer reassured me this was normal. All the reading made me more comfortable with the vocabulary and the state of the research.
Alexandrina: I agree. The internship was a great opportunity to taste what it is like to be an academic researcher. When you actively participate in the data collection, analysis, writing and publishing of an academic article, you learn a lot on the way.
What was your highlight during the internship?
Alexandrina: During the internship, I felt very empowered to start new initiatives. So with some of the interns, we created a podcast series in which we discuss topics of interest related to the GSC activity with researchers and experts in the field. In the first episode of the podcast, I interviewed Arnoud Molenaar, the Chief Resilience Officer of Rotterdam. It was fascinating to hear how the municipality puts research into practice and prepare for the future.
Catherine: For me, it was the freedom to choose a subject that personally interests me, the gender gap, and seeing the results of our analysis published in Holyrood magazine and on the GSC website!
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Dr. Jennifer Holland on Catherine:
Catherine exemplifies the GSC mission of conducting high-quality academic research that speaks to the most current and pressing social challenges. Catherine has a deep commitment to feminism and closing the gender data gap, and this drove our research agenda. Our research provided essential insights into the degree to which Scottish political parties acknowledge the essential role of women in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. Using skills she has developed in the Erasmus University Management of International Social Challenges bachelor program, Catherine made an important contribution to sociopolitical debates in the run-up to the Scottish Parliamentary elections last spring. It has been an honor and a pleasure to collaborate with her!
Dr. Iain Todd on Alexandrina:
The student intern programme under ESSB's Global Societal Challenges (GSC) pillar ran for the first time in 2021. There was considerable competition for places. On the theme of energy and climate, Alexandrina undertook an excellent study of the prospects for natural gas in Eastern Europe. This was rewarded by her authorship of an article on this subject in a Romanian business magazine, and then the co-authorship of an academic paper which has been submitted to the Journal of International Studies for possible publication.
