Email The Plant (plant-fasos@maastrichtuniversity.nl) or use our Contact Form to apply.
Internship Details:
Descriptions of Positions:
The Plant is seeking a motivated and creative student intern to continue designing and writing content for our website. This is an excellent opportunity for a student interested in web design, user experience, and short-form writing to gain practical experience.
Responsibilities:
· Review and analyse the existing website content, identifying areas that can be improved and streamlined;
· Collaborate with team members to restructure the content into logical categories and create a clear site hierarchy;
· Develop a proposed menu structure that enhances usability and accessibility;
· Test the website across various devices and browsers to ensure compatibility and responsiveness;
· Keep events and news updated
· Write summaries and conduct interviews with collaborators to document projects, initatives, and collaborations
Skills:
· Strong understanding of web design principles, user experience best practices, and content strategy;
· Excellent writing skills in English;
· Familiar or willing to learn WordPress;
· Detail-oriented and highly organised with strong problem-solving capabilities.
Are you a creative and enthusiastic individual with a passion for communication and social media? Do you have a keen interest in staying up to date with the latest trends in digital communication? If so, we want you to join our team as a Communications Intern!
As a Communications Intern, you will play a vital role in enhancing our online presence and fostering engagement with our audience. This internship offers an excellent opportunity to gain hands-on experience in crafting compelling content, managing social media platforms, and contributing to strategic communication initiatives.
· Create and curate engaging content for various social media channels, including but not limited to Instagram, LinkedIn, and UMployee, using or improving previously developed reproducible templates for events, such as workshops, seminars, lectures, or other occurrences at UM and FASoS;
· Write medium- and long-form articles on current events and technological trends for LinkedIn and The Plant’s website (in collaboration with the Web Design & Content Intern);
· Develop a communications plan and posting schedule for the forthcoming year;
· Learn the basics of video editing and audio editing to plan, edit, and create short videos and interviews with colleagues and collaborators pertaining to work done with The Plant by colleagues;
· Monitor social media trends among similar Labs and provide insights to optimize content strategy.
Skills:
· Strong Writing and Editing Skills: Ability to craft clear and compelling content tailored to different platforms and audiences;
· A journalistic mindset in search of opportunities and compelling perspectives to report, through text and photography, on activities or initiatives related to the Plant;
· Familiarity with various social media platforms (Instagram & LinkedIn) and understanding of each platform’s best practices and trends;
· Competency in creating visually appealing content, including graphics and videos, that aligns with brand identity and message. ·Proficiency in platforms like Figma or Canva is a plus; willing ness to learn is very welcome.
Are you curious about merging your theoretical knowledge with the practical? Would you like to contribute to a research project at The Plant?
We’re looking for a Research Project intern to support preliminary research as part of the research conducted within two projects: 1) Unsilencing as Restitution (UnRest). Recurating the Robert Jacob Gordon collections in the contemporary South African landscape and 2) Traumascapes: Valuing, Negotiating and Sharing Sites of Trauma, Pain and Loss. The internship will be supervised by Dr. Claartje Rasterhoff and Dr. Christian Ernsten at FASoS. Your core task will be conducting a systematic review of counter-mapping, counterarchiving and digital activism projects to explore what initiatives already exist in this research space, and possible scenarios for recurating the Robert Jacob Gordon collections.
In recent years many Dutch colonial heritage collections and archives have been digitised and made publicly available. While in the past these colonial collections contributed in significant ways towards a European consciousness of places and people in Africa, Asia and Latin America, they also result from the violence associated with colonial conquest. They resonate with the silencing of local and indigenous knowledge and the disenfranchisement or fragmentation of local communities.
The projects that this internship contributes to engages with these issues by recurating the digitised collection of the work by Robert Jacob Gordon (1743-1795), a colonial traveller to the South African Cape region. The majority of the surviving manuscripts are held in three collections: The Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam), the Brenthurst Library (Johannesburg) and the National Archives (The Hague). The Rijksmuseum has recently digitised most of the Gordon documents (robertjacobgordon.nl), making this an ideal collection to re-examine both colonial views of the South African past, as well as develop a critical contemporary reading of such views.
In order for this collection to have a transformative impact on the study of such ‘traumascapes’, a more generous interface will allow for a re-examination of the collection through a participatory process. With digital tools that allow for participatory and/or story telling functionalities, the project members will work with the disenfranchised communities surrounding the collection of Robert Jacob Gordon to develop a counter archive. The disenfranchised communities would add to the existing digital interface via a counter archive of text, mappings, sketching, diary making, sound recordings, photographic and video documentation. This internship will help the project leads lay the groundwork for ‘recurating’ the existing digital collection (interface) in the coming years.
What You’ll Do:
– Perform a systematic review of existing counter-mapping initiatives
– Support the project leads with research-related tasks as needed
– Help communicate the project externally, including contributions to the website and social media
Skills:
– Familiarity or demonstrable interest in digital collections and/or research methods;
– Good time management and the ability to work independently within a set timeline;
– Curiosity, creativity, and comfort with working both solo and as part of a team.