What do PhDs think about our placement scheme?
With well over 100 PhD placements since 2016, we’ve gathered thoughts from alumni.
We place a lot of emphasis on ensuring that PhD students benefit from doing a placement in our team. We deploy them on live policy projects, give them as much responsibility as they can handle, invest in their development, and encourage them to come up with ways of improving our products and services. As a result, they gain skills and experiences that they can apply in academia or in the next stage of their career, whether it’s in the public, private or third sector or back in the Open Innovation Team as a permanent team member.
Ruben McNeil Walsh, UWE Bristol
The PhD placement scheme with the OIT is a fantastic opportunity. From my first day, I was heavily involved with policy projects, getting to see first-hand how academic evidence can contribute to decision making in government, whilst learning from experienced officials. I was delighted to stay on with the OIT and I now work part time as a Policy Advisor alongside finishing my PhD. The placement has proved to be an invaluable opportunity in helping me progress my career in policy.
Zaynab Seedat, University of York
I want to say a thank you to all of the team, even those who I haven’t met properly, for making me feel so welcome, especially working online! The team culture has been so fun and relaxed, but at the same time hardworking and absolutely on it. It’s been such a pleasure to see people who are so great at what they do and who are so passionate, even when it comes to difficult projects and clients.
Adam Meylan-Stevenson, University of Southampton
I would recommend the OIT placement to any student wanting to get experience with collaborative project work. It’s not necessary to have an interest in policy. The experience of time-bound, collaborative project work is greatly rewarding. If you’re planning on an academic career, the placement is a good way to get experience of policy to better understand how academic research can be made useful and usable.
Freyja McCreery, University of York
The experience of some people doing internships elsewhere is that they end up doing tedious administrative jobs that do little to contribute to your CV. This is certainly not the case with the Open Innovation Team. I was treated as any other member of staff would be. This setup allowed me to develop my skills and enhance my CV as any full-time member of the civil service would.
Amelia Watkins-Smith, University of Nottingham
My understanding of the ways academic research can impact policy has developed significantly during the placement. I was able to attend training for academics on this topic and contribute to bespoke ‘impact advice clinics’. I hope to use this new knowledge to facilitate impact from my own PhD research.
Oluwatosin Adebola-Akande, University of Essex
In academia, I’m used to spending months gathering evidence before producing research outputs, but the turnover time is quick here, which means you work on producing parts of a report very quickly. I particularly enjoyed the process of working on a project outside my research field, and adapting the broader research and analytical skills I’ve acquired on my PhD into decision-making.
James Waddell, UCL
I have always had an interest in policy, but with my humanities PhD, I wasn’t sure how to forge a path into the civil service. On the OIT placement, I was able to apply my research skills and experience of academia to real-world issues across a really diverse and interesting set of policy areas from youth violence to AI. The support, training and mentorship that I received put me in a position where I was able to successfully apply for a Policy Advisor role on the team, which I’m now doing part-time while I write up my thesis.