Research Internship New Media & Digital Culture

Course goals

In the Research Internship course we ask you to actively engage with the professional field, and to learn to translate academic knowledge into everyday organizational, business, and policy issues. By having to report back on the productive translation from theory to practice, you learn that you have an important role to play in society at large when it comes to making visible the many strengths of studying media from a Humanities perspective. To be able to critically reflect on present-day trends and discourses is a valuable skill, and it is a highly sought ability in the work field.

The goal of the Research Internship is: 
- to complement your theoretical knowledge with hands-on practice within an organization;
- to have you learn how to communicate conclusions (as well as the knowledge, justifications, and considerations underlying such conclusions) to an audience composed of specialists as well as non-specialists;
- to have you understand and be able to situate yourself in the contemporary work field of new media and digital culture;
- to have you learn to report on your own development as a professional in the work field of new media and digital culture;
- to have you realize your own learning goals as formulated in the research internship proposal you will write in the beginning of the internship period. 

Content

The Research Internship gives you the opportunity to test new media practices against new media theory. During a period of three months you will work within a company, a governmental, educational, cultural organization, an NGO or any other place where new media and digital culture play a significant role. What you do during the research internship consists, by definition, of two parts: practical duties and research activities. The practical duties consist of the work that the organisation took you on for: editorial work, advice, logistics, etc. Usually this results in delivering a specific product (like a report or website) or pursuing a specific assignment (like organizing an event or editorial duties). Concurrently with these duties, you carry out academic research that is embedded in your specific work environment. You will be asked to reflect upon both practical and academic activities by producing an internship research report, based on a carefully designed research proposal. This report should be the result of a critical analysis of the working experience from an academic perspective.
 

Additional information

Career orientation:
The Research Internship provides you with opportunities par excellence to get acquainted with the processes and discourses of the working field of new media; it is where you test your academic and professional skills, and where you build networks that help you find a job after you have graduated.

Course registration
The HUM Internship Office will register you for the Internship course. Before they can do that, you need to take a number of steps yourself. You can find these steps on the internship page of your programme. The fixed registration periods for regular courses do not apply to internships. On the internship page you can find when you should have registered.