Internships and Placements

The WISE CDT has encouraged students to apply for UKRI Policy Internships during their programme. The UKRI Policy Internships scheme provides a valuable opportunity for UKRI-funded doctoral students to be placed with an influential policy organisation for three-months, with their funded studentship being extended by the same period. The aim is to offer students the chance to experience the process of developing and shaping research evidence into policy.

Dr Catherine Leech (Cardiff, Cohort 4) and Dr James Rand (Bath, Cohort 5) were both successful in their applications and found the experience extremely worthwhile. Catherine’s internship was at the Government Office for Science (GO-Science), while James was based at the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA).

At GO-Science Catherine worked with the Science Network and Chief Scientific Advisers Capability Team to learn how science informs policy at the heart of government. Go-Science supports the Government Chief Scientific Adviser in ensuring that the government has access to the best scientific evidence to inform policy and long-term decision making. 

DEFRA aligned James’ internship with his PhD topic area and placed him with their water evidence team. The purpose of this group is to research and provide evidence so that water-related policy can be developed and presented to government. During his placement James predominantly collaborated with researchers from the Environment Agency:

WISE students have also pursued other opportunities to gain valuable work experience. In 2021, during the height of the Coronavirus pandemic, Dr Debbie Shackleton (Exeter, Cohort 4) took a break from her PhD studies to join the UK Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC) as an Early Career Researcher. In this role Debbie used the expertise acquired from her PhD research into modelling cholera outbreaks to help develop models to better understand the COVID-19 outbreak and so inform policy development.