Internship Thesis
Full course description
The Internship exam option offers an opportunity for students who are eager to do research in addition to gaining professional experience in the context of government institutions, NGOs, policy institutes and other development organizations. Interns gain work experience in the field of globalization and development, contributing to their personal development and enhancing their prospects on the job market by learning from experienced professionals. An internship exam option also allows students to explore potential career paths and find out more about their personal skills and interests. Simultaneously, within the professional environment, students also do independent academic research and write an academic thesis that connects to their academic training in the field of Globalisation and Development.
Course objectives
After completion of this course, students are able to:
- apply and make use of the relevant knowledge and skills acquired during the Master GDS
- identify and formulate clear research questions or theses that help to direct the research & writing process
- conduct a comprehensive literature search and bibliographic analysis, and assess the quality of the selected sources
- find, assess and critically analyse primary and secondary data
- critically reflect upon the relations between theories, concepts, methodology, and empirical findings and use these insights to build an academic argument and position themselves in an academic debate
- use theoretical perspectives from a variety of academic fields for a chosen research topic related to their internship, and within the scholarly domain of Globalisation and Development Studies
- write a complete academic thesis of appropriate structure and length in understandable academic English that is well-documented, including quotations, footnotes, in-text references and a reference list (APA)
- engage with and incorporate constructive (academic) feedback
- plan, carry out and finalize their own research within a fixed time‐frame
acquire the academic and personal skills to conduct and reflect upon internship research in an ethical and socially responsible fashion