European Studies
Internship as part of the European Studies MA
Before you decide that you want to go on a work placement
- Be aware that you can also spend your 3rd semester on the ES MA attending some of the profile or optional subjects offered across Arts or other faculties at AU, or studying at a foreign university. Please consult your academic regulations .
- Please register for the work placement on your stads-self service on time.
Travel grant
- You can apply for ‘Travel Grants’ to cover travel and accommodation expenses. You can do this even before you have found an work placement position.
Information about application deadline and the application form with instructions is available here.
Finding a Work placement position
- You have to find and apply for a position yourself. If you are in doubt as to what kind of work placement position meets the requirements in European studies seek advice from the student counsellor. Generally, positions at European embassies, EU institutions, EU oriented NGO’s or Government agencies dealing with Europe or some aspect of European affairs are accepted.
- The application and acceptance procedures are specific to each individual company/NGO/organization. You will need to figure out those relevant to you yourself.
- The work placement must be completed before the end of the semester to ensure that the Master’s thesis semester can commence on time.
- You cannot apply for a prolonging of the thesis period due to the work placement period.
Get approval for your internship
- Once the host institution/organization/company of your work placement/field work has accepted you, you need to get it approved by the Department of Global Studies.
- Fill out the form Project placement agreement and ask the Global Studies work placement coordinator for his or her signature.
- The signed agreement must be uploaded using the form for 'Preliminary approval for courses outside AU' at MyStudies before starting the project.
- Detailed instructions on how to upload the agreement can be found under point number 4 in the page Project placement / Field study at Arts.
- If you find a work placement / internship before June, you will be assigned a supervisor in the beginning of June. In most cases, the work placement academic supervisor will be the same person as the thesis supervisor.
- Those who find a placement in June or later, will be assigned a supervisor as quickly as possible hereafter and the Department will make every endeavour, as far as possible, to ensure that the academic supervisor for the work placement and the thesis supervisor is the same person.
Writing an internship report
In your exam paper, you must explain your choice of topic and clarify how it relates to the host institution and its activities. The main part of the paper, however, is an academic analysis, in which you draw on literature, themes, theories, and methods learned during your first two semesters at the MA program. This does not mean that you must include elements from all courses. Your task is to select the acquired tools most relevant for doing the concrete analysis of the topic chosen by you. This selection is part of the process and has to be discussed with your supervisor. We strongly recommend that you select a narrow, well-defined topic and consult your supervisor about the outline of your paper. To the extent that your analysis points towards your MA thesis, you may include reflections on this linkage.
At the Department, we typically offer three meetings with your supervisor for the project placement: one shortly after you have begun work at your host institution; one halfway through the process; and one a few weeks before the submission deadline set in the examination plan. These three meetings will typically be online. The meetings must focus on both elements of your submission: that is the thesis assignment and the exam paper.
