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The UNIQ+ Postgraduate Research Internships programme is seeking project requests from research staff who are willing to supervise interns working in their department during the 2023 summer vacation.

About the UNIQ+ Postgraduate Research Internships

The UNIQ+ Postgraduate Research Internships programme is a graduate access programme taking place each summer, enabling participants to experience graduate study at Oxford.

The target audience of the programme is undergraduates from underrepresented and disadvantaged backgrounds who are/have been on an upwards academic trajectory, and may be interested in postgraduate study or a career in research, but are unlikely to consider that this is obtainable.

The UNIQ+ internships will be funded by Crankstart (all subjects), Wellcome (biomedical subjects), ESRC (social sciences subjects) and potentially by DeepMind (AI and machine learning).

Dates

The internship is expected to run in Oxford for seven weeks from Monday 3 July to Friday 18 August 2023. The first week will be an induction week which will include orientation and training in skills that will be relevant to the project. Interns will work on their project from Monday 10 July for the remaining six weeks.

Project requests

The UNIQ+ Management Group would like to seek proposals for projects in all four divisions. Projects can be for an individual student or for a team of 2-4 students, and should have a tangible outcome that applicants can include on their CVs. Work could include a targeted piece of research or broader experiences across multiple techniques, laboratory studies or clinical analysis, archival study, bibliographic project, written report, data gathering, data analysis, software development etc. Interns will be required to produce a report and deliver a short presentation at the end of the internship.

Projects will be listed on the UNIQ+ website, and promoted via an extensive marketing campaign. Candidates will be able to select their preferred project(s) on the application form.

Supervision requirements

Supervisors should be prepared to contact their interns in early to mid-June before projects start, then have relatively frequent contact time with them, particularly at the beginning of the project, and regularly throughout the six weeks. This could either be by the supervisor directly or a broader ‘supervisory team’ (eg post docs). Supervisors or their delegate will need to meet interns at least once a week, and there should be someone available to work with the intern and answer their questions on a day-to-day basis.

The academic supervisor will also be expected to take on a career mentoring role, interacting with the students to discuss their aspirations and career plans, and providing insight and advice into the process of applying for graduate study. Supervisors are encouraged to involve their post-docs and / or current graduate students in assisting with the supervision.

Assessment of applications

Supervisors will need to be prepared to assess the applications for their project(s) that will have been pre-sifted by the UNIQ+ divisional lead assessors. The assessment period will be a two-week period between mid-March to early April. A UNIQ+ admissions panel will make the final decisions, with input from supervisors.

Funding

The programme is fully funded centrally by Crankstart and other sources. Student participants will be paid £2,750 and accommodation will be provided free of charge. Up to £500/student will be available to support consumables or other essential project-related expenses where required. If supervisors wish to recompense post-docs/DPhil students for help with supervision, this would have to be organised and paid at departmental level. Where departments do not have the funds, a request for support can be submitted to Graduate Admissions and Recruitment but please note available funds for this purpose are limited, and it may not be possible to fund all requests.

Submit a project

Complete this form to submit a project

Deadline: Friday 11 November 2022

Contact

Please contact uniqplus@admin.ox.ac.uk with any questions