Hi everyone!

This week, I’m going to to tell you a bit more about some of the opportunities you can find here at Lancaster if you’re interested in gaining new skills, improving your employability, and put what you study into practice. Among the projects I’ve taken part in over the last couple of years, there’s two I’d definitely recommend: the Richardson Institute Internship Programme and the Lancaster Mentoring Programme.

The Richardson Institute is the oldest Peace Studies research centre in the UK, and it is based at Lancaster University. Every year, it offers an internship programme directed at students in their second and third year, which starts in October/November and ends in June. Students get to work with external organisations, such as International Alert, Maslaha, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and RadicalisationResearch, to produce research reports on socially relevant topics. Last year, for example, I worked in a group of about 6 people, tackling issues to do with injustice in the UK education system. I found the internship particularly valuable, in that it allowed me to gain research experience outside of the sort of research you get to do for your degree.

The second opportunity I mentioned is the Mentoring Programme. This project, too, is run every year, and it helps you gaining a better understanding of what to do after uni; or, if you know that already, it allows you to sharpen your knowledge of your chosen career path. Students get paired with professionals in the field that they express an interest in, and they then meet their mentors on a regular basis, learning about their job, about how to pursue specific careers, how to gain experience relevant to particular jobs, how to write a good CV, etc. For me, the Mentoring Programme has been very helpful: my mentor helped me gaining a better idea of my future plans, aided me with choice of postgraduate study, and gave me tips about how to do well in applications.

I think it’s important to study in a place where you can find opportunities like the ones I’ve just described. They allow you to understand what you like doing, what your potential is, and what you’re good at: all things that is in general highly beneficial to know, but perhaps particularly so when you need to decide what to do with your life after uni.