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The Evidence Quarter

The EQ Internship Programme

The Evidence Quarter Internship programme is back for a fourth summer. 

Following the success of last year’s programme, we are looking for enthusiastic university students with a passion for finding evidence-led solutions to some of the biggest social challenges facing the UK today. Although most roles will be primarily research-based, there are also opportunities available in programme management.

This year interns can apply for roles at four of The EQ’s resident organisations: Foundations – What Works Centre for Children & Families, The Centre for Evidence and Implementation (CEI), Neighbourly Lab and The Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education (TASO). More information on each organisation can be found below.

Overview:

  • Internships will last six to eight weeks and the number of days per week can be flexible
  • Dependent on which organisation you are placed with, the role will be based at The EQ offices in the heart of Westminster (SW1H 9EA), with opportunities for hybrid working
  • Interns will be paid £14.46 per hour
  • Internships start in mid-July.

Find out what last year’s interns thought of their experience.

Who can apply:

  • The internship is open to university students from all backgrounds who have an interest in working in research, evidence-led organisations and making positive changes. We welcome students from diverse backgrounds and communities and students with lived experience
  • Applicants must be undergraduates in any degree programme (The Centre for Evidence and Implementation is also accepting Master’s students)
  • Enthusiasm and interest in the organisation areas is a must.

How to apply:

If you have any queries regarding the internship programme please contact info-eq@theevidencequarter.com.

What is the EQ?

The EQ is home to a growing number of evidence-minded organisations, including What Works Centres. Many organisations overlap in their goals of powering evidence-based change together for good in public sector areas. By bringing them together in one geographical space, the EQ encourages cross-pollination and fosters a shared culture of evidence use and collaboration on projects. This increases opportunities to learn and share common problems – from technical evidence issues to governance and politics, or the effective communication and implementation of evidence. 

Foundations – What Works Centre for Children & Families:

Foundations is an organisation born out of the merger in December 2022 of the Early Intervention Foundation and What Works for Children’s Social Care. Our new single What Works Centre’s vision is that vulnerable children should have the foundational family or other close relationships they need to thrive in life. It’s our mission to generate and champion actionable evidence that improves services to support family relationships.   

Interns at Foundations will work as part of our Evidence Team. The Evidence team conducts cutting edge research, including appraising the existing evidence base and commissioning evaluations of interventions for vulnerable children and their families. We are working in five priority areas: domestic abuse, supporting parenting, relationships for children with care experience, strengthening family networks and service and practice models.  

Interns will be integrated into the team and will be able to attend team meetings, training, and other events, as well as gaining first-hand experience working in a dynamic organisation at the intersection of policy and research. Our people are at the heart of everything we do at Foundations, and it is vital that our workforce reflects the diversity of our stakeholders and the wider society in the UK. Therefore we are proud to be an equal opportunities employer and we actively seek candidates from diverse backgrounds and communities. We know that young people who are care experienced often have worse education and employment outcomes in comparison to their peers. For this reason, we welcome applications from care leavers.  

We also recognise the importance of a good work life balance, so we do everything we can to accommodate flexible working, including part-time. We will consider applicants from any part of England who wish to be home based providing they are willing to travel across England as required, and able to participate in meetings in London either virtually or physically. We operate a hybrid working approach.    

CEI:

The Centre for Evidence and Implementation carries out research for organisations, governments and foundations and supports them to use evidence to improve services for families, children and communities facing adversity. We work across policy and practice areas including social care, education, mental health and wellbeing, youth justice, employment and early childhood development. Our work involves evidence synthesis, evaluation and active implementation support, with a special focus on applying learning and resources from implementation science and practice. We have a team of 12 people in London, as well as teams in Norway, Australia and Singapore, and work with academics and other partners around the world.

CEI’s internship is open to students who are undertaking degrees in topics relevant to the policy and practice areas listed above, and who are in the final or penultimate year of study at undergraduate or Masters levels.  

The particular work an intern would take on will depend on the projects we have on the go, but might involve: 

  • General desk research 
  • Screening and summarising texts for inclusion in systematic reviews or other evidence synthesis 
  • Recruiting participants to evaluations
  • Designing questionnaires and monitoring information collection 
  • Analysing quantitative data 
  • Designing qualitative data collection approaches and tools and undertaking qualitative interviews and focus groups
  • Writing reports or summaries for a range of audiences 
  • Background research on policy and practice areas and on aspects of implementation science, to support ongoing work or business development 
  • Supporting our networking and profile raising, supporting events and conferences

Neighbourly Lab:

Neighbourly Lab’s mission is to increase social connectedness in the UK and to build stronger communities. We explore the ways that communities interact, both in the real world and online. Our work is primarily with councils, big tech firms and community service providers. We are looking for a bright and energetic intern to join us for 6 weeks in the summer of 2024. We are particularly looking for final year students and we are happy to hear from people who are interested in part time or full time work.

The skills that you need to possess are:

  • Research skills: quantitative and qualitative. We will expect you to have good analytical skills and to know the basic qualitative methods that exist  
  • Communication skills: you will meet a variety of stakeholders so great oral and written comms skills are essential  
  • Creativity: we want to hear your ideas of scaling up social connectedness  
  • Passion for start-ups: our work is dynamic and changes every day so we want you to be flexible and solution-driven  
  • Digitally savvy: we are working on connecting communities digitally, as well as physically, so it will be great if you have an interest in all things digital and you can bring fresh ideas to our projects  
  • Administrative help: you will be required to help with small admin day-to-day tasks in support of the Ops manager  
  • Eagerness to learn and to be proactive, great team player and challenge lover

Get a feel of what it is like being an intern with us: What are our 2022 interns saying about Neighbourly Lab? 

Read about the projects that we are working on at the moment/done in the past: What is the Glimpse Project?, How does loneliness impact the Armed Forces and their families, Severe Loneliness in London – who’s most at risk, and why? 

TASO:

The Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education (TASO) is an affiliate What Works Centre, and part of the UK Government’s What Works Movement. Our vision is to eliminate equality gaps in higher education (HE). Our mission is to improve lives through evidence-informed practice. 

TASO was set up in 2019 within King’s College London and became an independent charity in 2021. Our work focuses on the generation, synthesis and dissemination of high-quality evidence about effective practice in widening participation and student outcomes. We primarily focus on developing and disseminating causal evidence. 

Interns at TASO would work with our Research and Evaluation team to deliver a variety of projects. This might include supporting our work on summer schools, or on attainment gaps in degree awarding, or supporting us with evidence reviews and policy responses. We would seek to ensure that the intern had clear objectives for a particular project, and line management support, while also interacting with the whole TASO team. TASO is committed to ensuring that the internship experience would both benefit us as an organisation, as well as benefiting interns who work with us. 

We are particularly interested in supporting candidates who are undertaking or have completed a course that involves economic or social research and/or considering a career in this area. 

We welcome applications from all individuals. We are committed to equality, diversity and inclusion among our workforce and through this internship we aim to support individuals to learn and build their skills in research environments for social good. With this in mind we are flexible as to working patterns and are happy to hear from people who are interested in part time or full time work.

Examples of the tasks you may undertake:

  • Provide support to the Research & Evaluation team  
  • Contribute to the administration and secretariat for a number of advisory panels formed of external stakeholders. 
  • Contribute to the delivery of external training courses and events to disseminate the work of TASO’s research programme 
  • Conduct desk-based research 
  • Contribute to TASO internal meetings