Assessment Details

As the timing of each placement is unique to each student, due dates will be determined in conversation with your academic supervisor. 

Weekly Journal

4 x 500 words (40%)

The journal provides the student the opportunity to reflect on the cultural work being undertaken. Students should use it to identify and discuss pertinent issues that arise from work undertaken, both with regard to: 1) ongoing learning about the subject area: and 2) the processes and practices of cultural research.

The focus is personal reflection and analysis of work-in-progress, i.e. what you are learning about cultural work from being on placement. Some effort to respond to the ideas of others about topics at hand should be made and some effort to identify cultural issues raised by your experience and discuss them should be made. This could also involve some basic library or Internet research, and/or consideration of interactions with peers/subjects in the research project undertaken.

Deadline: *the journal should comprise a minimum of four entries, representing the internship process at different stages. At least one entry should be made for each five days spent in internship, and should be posted within three days of completing each five-day block. More than four entries may be made if desired. 

Internship Placement Report 

1000-word equivalent presentation (20%)

1500 words written report (40%)

The report gives an overview of the whole experience plus a consideration of its intellectual significance. It should include a summary of the placement activity, including the activity/research undertaken, the results and outcomes of the research and any limitations or challenges faced. Finally it should give a brief critical analysis and literature review of a key cultural/research method issue that was raised in the course of the placement, outlining key perspectives taken on it by other researchers and posing questions to be pursued in the research essay of GCST5907.

In short, the aims are to: 1) outline the placement activity: and 2) then discuss a research problem of intellectual significance that was generated by the placement experience.

The report should be presented and referenced in line with the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies style guide.

In combination the assessments enable the student to generate and analyse some of the most important lessons from the placement experience. They lay the groundwork for further development in the follow-on unit GCST 5907 Cultural Studies Internship Project in which the major assessment is a research essay on a topic related to the internship.

In addition to the assessments, you must attend throughout your internship placement and also receive a satisfactory report from your on-site/placement supervisor to meet the progression requirements.

It is a condition of all placement assessment that data generated in the course of your placement and personal reflection upon the placement process be confined only to the assessments below and not published in any public forum, unless you explicitly gain the approval of the placement host (e.g. if you wanted to develop your final research essay into an article for a journal, or a conference paper).