SEI’s Equitable Resource Rights and Governance team focuses on equity-centred interventions in policy and practice. Through our research, we aim to provide an actionable understanding of how actors such as governments, companies and communities can contest and reconstruct visions and agendas for the implementation of sustainability actions.

A central purpose is to explore how transformative dialogue and co-learning for more equitable resource governance outcomes can be achieved despite disabling political structures and entrenched power imbalances. The team is guided by participatory and action-oriented research methodologies and the application of critical social theory.

We have a particular interest in understanding intersecting lines of discrimination such as combining attention to Indigenous People’s rights with gender analyses and feminist theory. We support partners in a range of geographies, wherever inequities are entrenched in resource governance institutions. Currently, we have projects and programs in Latin America, Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Arctic, notably Sápmi (the Sámi homeland).

As an intern, you will be based in the Equitable Resource Rights and Governance team and contribute primarily to project work on gender, social equity and poverty, and on Indigenous Peoples’ rights.

As part of SEI’s cross-center Gender Equality, Social Equity and Poverty (GESEP) programme, the intern will have the opportunity to contribute towards:

• research activities that explore the interconnected drivers and outcomes of gender inequality, social inequity, multidimensional poverty and unsustainability, as well as evidence-based strategies to transform them. Specific themes will be confirmed, but the aim is to provide foresight and explicitly link to various ongoing global societal and industrial transitions. Examples include the just transition and green jobs, transitions to climate justice and decolonizing development. The intern may support this work stream with critical gender analyses and other qualitative research methodologies.
• the GESEP Community of Practice (CoP). SEI’s GESEP programme is nurturing a CoP for SEI staff with an interest in GESEP. The CoP facilitates learning and connection between those who are new to this area and experts across SEI centers to integrate GESEP into research and project development. Opportunities to contribute include co-organizing and participating in the CoP Innovation Lab and internal learning events and supporting CoP-related internal communication.
• a potential new “Global GESEP outlook”-type publication on intersecting inequities and multidimensional poverty within a global policy context, an exciting opportunity to get to know SEI’s diverse competencies and geographical embeddedness across the world. The intern may support report writing and coordinating inputs into the report and can also support the GESEP programme’s internal policy engagement coordination.

As part of work ongoing in the Equitable Resource Rights and Governance Team on Indigenous Peoples in the green transition, the intern may support the mapping of and consultations with actors involved in issues surrounding Indigenous Peoples in the green transition.

There will be opportunities to contribute to proposal writing and presentations.

• Student nearing completion of master’s degree in a relevant subject (development studies, humanitarian studies, gender studies, sociology, international relations, political economy, other related social sciences or similar)
• Knowledge of qualitative research methodologies and critical feminist analyses, gender, environment, and development linkages, human rights-based approaches and Indigenous Peoples’ rights
• Experience conducting literature reviews and stakeholder mappings
• Willingness to work in a collaborative environment, including remotely, and a natural ability to coordinate and drive tasks forward
• Fluent in English.

The internship can also be part of your thesis work, but your thesis should not be your primary focus during the internship.

Please submit your application no later than 6 November 2022, 23:59 Stockholm local time. Applications should be written in English and consist of a short CV (including one reference with name, affiliation and contact details) and cover letter (maximum 1 page).

Please include a cover letter addressing and including:

• what you would like to do during the internship and your strengths related to the application text
• how the internship relates to your studies and future plans
• and the insurance you would be fully covered by
• a CV with one reference (name, affiliation and contact details).

This internship is full-time and for six months from January to June 2023, with some flexibility.

The internship is based at SEI HQ in Stockholm, Sweden. The intern should be able to attend two meetings in person a week and is welcome to work from HQ, but the rest of the internship can be completed and supervision will primarily be remotely.