Internships & Research Associateships

At the moment, we can accommodate 8 Interns per year (i.e. students affiliated with a university wanting to do an internship or stage to earn credits). The process has become rather competitive: thank you for understanding that we cannot accommodate all those who apply. 

For those applying for an Internship for the Fall 2022 semester, alas we are no longer taking applications. 

We are working on an online system, and will have it up-and-running within a few months. 

We accept Research Associates based on our research interests and curatorial and collection needs. If you are interested in a Research Associate position (i.e. you are not conducting an official internship with your university; you can also be an independent researcher), please email alessandra.benedicty@wereldculturen.nl 

Critical Institutional Research
You are conducting research 'on' or 'about' our museum/s.

Our Talent Development Program offers young academics, curators and practiced based researchers the opportunity to work with/under the supervision of our team of researchers, to conduct research on the NMVW’s collections, or to pursue professional training within our museums on issues related to curatorship, collections care, registration and documentation.

Interns work closely with our research and collections team and have access to our internationally renowned collections of almost one million objects and photos. They will participate in the ongoing projects of our research staff, which vary from collections documentation research and research for future exhibitions, to international collaborative research projects on different themes.

Students currently registered in a relevant MA or advanced bachelors programme can apply for an internship, and must work together with one of our staff. Due to the high volume of internship requests from students we cannot but be selective.

Before applying, please familiarise yourself with our work. 

All interns are required to support both the research and programming activities of the RCMC staff and contribute to organizing RCMC events.

Interns should:

• be registered as a MA student or PhD researcher throughout the internship period (in exceptional circumstances we accept advanced Bachelors students)
• be able to work independently and use on-line resources to develop their project.
• have an excellent command of Dutch and/or English, both orally and in written form
• be enthusiastic and able to take initiative. Work politely and be open to suggestions as how to welcome and be caring to guests and employees from around the world.
• be a team player. Respect the professions and the professional lives of museum employees and their schedules and can plan their work and respond to the institutional codes and practices of behavior accordingly. 
• have an affinity for museums, art and culture
• For students of anthropology, or for those who wish to do ethnography of or within the museum, we will more readily accept projects with a research agenda that lasts at least six months and is conform to the ethical criteria of ethnographic research, following for example standard Institutional Review Board (IRB) practices.  
  • Much of the work we do asks that we be as protective as possible to the communities with whom we work and of our own employees. While we absolutely accept critique, the way ethnographic work takes place in our institution must honor the complexities of an institutional context and especially of ours.
  • Our professional staff have full work agendas, and any interviews or research projects that directly concerns staff, needs to be agreed and negotiated with the permission of the internship coordinator at the NMVW so that it can be properly planned and does not impose on individuals or disrupt business continuity. Once you have applied and obtained approval to do an internship at NMVW, you will agree on your work schedule with the internship coordinator before you can proceed with interviews.

• For internships associated with the Curatorial and/or Research Center for Material Culture, we are interested in fostering innovative perspectives on the ethnographic museum and its collections and their history.  We welcome students from interdisciplinary backgrounds in the humanities or social sciences as well as students from other backgrounds such as architecture, design, psychology and biological or material sciences. We are also interested in welcoming students who come from a more area studies interest, and those who have personal lived experience or sustained work alongside a given community that self-identifies as connected to a given geographic area.
• For internships associated with Preservation, we focus on developing community-based conservation policies and preparing groups of objects for storage moving.

Note: We do not offer funding for interns.

THESIS PROJECTS

For MA and Ph.D. students wanting to do research on or about the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen (that is any of the four museums comprise our institution), we very much welcome such projects and have supported them consistently over the past years. That said, due to how incredibly busy our staff is, and how popular it has become to study our museum/s, at this point, we can only accommodate one project per year.

To this end, if you are interested in applying to research the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen for your own thesis, please email the following documents to alessandra.benedicty@wereldculturen.nl by the below deadline. An internal committee will review the applications and get back to you by July 31, 2022. All applicants will be advised of their status.

If you plan to do your thesis in the 2022-23 academic year, send the materials by May 1, 2022. The materials include:

• a 1000-1500 proposal that includes: an abstract; proposed methodologies; expected impact to current research, community building, justice work, and/or museum practices; discussion of your own implicatedness (i.e. "situatedness"; "self-reflexivity" as a researcher)
• a 1-page  timeline for your research project
• a CV, no longer than 5 pages
• Nota Bene: 
• We are aware that in recent years, excitingly, many programs have been teaching literature about decolonizing the museum, an ethical inquiry that we are committed to that requires self-reflection and critique, a long-term commitment. We expect students who do internships with us to be as critical as they are respectful: listening, being themselves open to critique, and also critiquing us by fully engaging in rigorous, cutting-edge practices in what it means to be an academic and a professional working in a museum.
• Before you contact us, we invite you to consult with standard practices of the Internal Review Board process. The Lafayette College has a concise summary of what IRB is. Many scholarly publications require IRB approval for publication of research results based on human subject research. What we are interested in that in your contact with us when you seek research, we ask that you write emails to request an interview or consult models of informed consent that correspond to standard practice. You can find examples on the IRB website of Utrecht Universiteit, whose acronym is FETCH. If your project is selected, we will also work with you on generating appropriate methodologies. 

If you are applying from the EU, there is no extra legal paperwork. If you are applying from outside of the EU and you are enrolled in a university program in Europe, you may also apply, as you have a student visa.

There are several application dates.

For an internship in the months between, September and December 2022, alas we are no longer accepting applications. 

For an internship in the months between, January and June 2023, based on applications we have already received, we will be selecting candidates by April 1, 2022. An internal committee will assess the applications, and we will get back to you by December 31, 2022. All applicants will be advised of their status. In future years, we will publish a deadline, and you will be able to apply through an online system.

Alas, due to summer schedules, we cannot accommodate summer internships.

For 2021-2022, we will be taking 3-8 students. We are seeking interns with subject expertise or clear personal interest in the following areas:

• Plastics (material science, environmental science in particular)
• Hip Hop
• African Kingdoms
• China 
• Martial Arts
• Thinking the concept of "indigenous"
• Hospitality and support to curators working with fellows and artists-in-residence
• Support to departments and specific collection work

Before applying, please familiarise yourself with our work.