PLACEMENT REPORT

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PLACEMENT REPORT

Chrysanthi Akoni

S3796930

Degree Programme Supervisor: Ms. Sonia Mascarell-Ordovas Placement Supervisor: Dr. Julia Costa López

July, 2020

Padangstraat 37, 9715CL Groningen, the Netherlands

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I. INTRODUCTION

As a part of the Master’s Programme in International Relations provided by the University of Groningen, the present ‘Placement Report’ will delve into the period between May 25th_{and July 10}th_{, 2020. During that time, I had the opportunity to work}

as a ‘Research Intern’ within the team of ‘History of International Relations’ of the International Relations and International Organization (IRIO) Department, and assist the courses’ professors with academic knowledge about the history of the 19th_and

20th centuries.

As a BA History graduate, this academic field has always been very close to my heart and my decision to pursue a MA in International Relations was seen at the time of my application (2018) as an extension of that passion. More specifically, I undertook many courses about the particular centuries and received generally substantial knowledge regarding our continent’s history. At the same time, the University of Groningen offered the opportunity of a compulsory internship, which was a great occasion to acquire further experience on an organization of my interest.

Selecting the ‘European Integration’ track came naturally, as I was already specialized in the European history and I wanted to grow more proficient about the practices and agencies of the European Union and the road towards human rights, democracy and security. However, the time that I had to go through with the applications towards a potential internship, a new virus called Covid-19 struck the world (World Health Organization) and everything suddenly seemed to feel uncertain. I knew that I had to do the compulsory placement, but many countries including the Netherlands, closed their borders in order contain the virus’ spread and advised the citizens to ‘stay home’ (Pew Research Center, 2020). For that reason, the University of Groningen came as a ‘deus ex machina’ and offered many research placements within the IRIO Department. Out of all the vacancies, the ‘Research Intern in History of International Relations’ was the one which I decided to apply and grew very hopeful that I could be one of the two selected applicants and fulfill the placement’s 10 ECTS.

This report will provide a comprehensive analysis of the placement’s tasks and activities, the events that took place during the 7 weeks of the internship, and the way I communicated with my fellow colleague and supervisors, as well as serve a general reflection on the research placement. Starting by explaining the internship, it will analyze every aspect, providing at the same time with images extracted by the actual work-platform as an example of the pedagogical tools created in order for the students of the ‘History of International Relations I’ and ‘History of International Relations II’ courses to successfully grasp the importance of the history of 19th_{and 20}th_{centuries in}

Europe and abroad. Ultimately, this research placement proved to be one of the most interesting and fulfilling experiences during a time that was (and still is) very stressful, unknown and generally difficult for all of us.

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II. SELECTION OF PLACEMENT, APPLICATION AND

PREPARATION

In order to be accepted at the Master’s Programme in International Relations, with a specialization in European Integration, I had to do a Pre-Master between 2018 and 2019. With this transition being successful, I am a student to the ‘European Integration’ track since February 2019. Thus, obtaining an internship was one of the last two parts in order to acquire the Master’s Degree. With my MA Thesis starting on January 2020, I knew I had to actively start applying for an internship.

Given my academic background, the MA specialization and my thesis’ subject which is about the 2016 EU-Turkey Statement on the refugee crisis, organizations such as Amnesty International, the United Nations Higher Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other institutions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) partnering with the EU occupied my leading interests. However, on March 2020 the Covid-19 virus burst through the globe, forcing the governments to shut down shops and cafes, order people to stay home and work from there, along with the airlines freezing their operations and generally the world coming into a pause – one that lasted for, at least, three months.

Feeling the uncertainty of the future, it seemed as though there would be no possibility for an internship at that time. Applications to EU agencies came back negative or were postponed, leaving a fertile ground for hopelessness to grow. Nevertheless, the IRIO Department posted many vacancies within the Master’s tracks, such as security, European integration and theory for that very reason – so that Master’s students would be able to graduate on time. I saw this opportunity as a light at the end of the ‘academic tunnel’ and applied as soon as I could. I had the pleasure to be interviewed by my future Placement Supervisor Dr. Julia Costa López a few days after the closure of the application period and immediately felt that this would be the MA Placement that would help me reach a step closer to the graduation.

After I accepted the offer, we quickly started from May 25th onwards to communicate

daily through video meetings with Dr. Costa López and my fellow research colleague, Ms. Floor Kolkman. At first, the meetings were longer as Dr. Costa López wanted to make sure we understood correctly the tasks and activities of the internship, how to efficiently use the Blackboard software through the Nestor page and generally make us feel at ease with this new endeavor for all of us. As Covid-19 was very much ‘alive’ during that time, the placement was fully-executed online.

Keeping in mind that this would be an online internship, I knew that my experience would not be the same as other fellow classmates, as working and coordinating from home and are a much different from an organization’s workplace. In spite of that, both the Placement’s Supervisor and Ms. Kolkman were very co-operative since the very beginning.

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III. PLACEMENT’S TASKS AND ACTIVITIES

Delving further into the Research Placement’s tasks and activities, our main goal was to assist with the research and development of pedagogical tools pertaining to the history of the 19th_{and 20}th_{centuries, while also find ways to link this knowledge to}

current events happening in the international relations.

As the field of International Relations (IR) was born because of the events of the Cold War and the general historical environment of the past centuries, the internship itself seemed to be a great way to not only deepen my existing knowledge, but also transmit that passion to younger students who had little to no information about the incidents of the past. In general, the two HIR courses covered many topics, such as:

HIR I (19th Century) Citation, Power Politics, Imperialism, Industrialism, Liberalism, Nationalism, Socialism

HIR II (20th_Century) _{Cold War, Middle East, Latin America, East Asia, South}

Asia and Decolonization, Africa, Eastern Europe

Our supervisor Dr. Costa López divided each of the 7 weeks with two subjects, and I had the opportunity to work on Citation, Power Politics, Imperialism and Nationalism, as well as Cold War, Middle East, Latin America and Eastern Europe from the HIR I and HIR II courses, respectively. She provided us with a manual called ‘Things to do each week’ which entailed what we should do and had information regarding our tasks. When it comes to the actual internship, our purpose was to work on the pre-existing tests and update them, write feedback and generally make sure that they will be ready to help the students understand the HIR courses on the following semester. More specifically, the tests were compulsory for the students at the end of each week, containing around fifty questions covering the textbook and building up on each other. The methods used mostly were matching (questions and pairs), multiple answers, multiple choice, filling the blanks and maps. Their purpose was to develop incentives and provide extra information regarding the professors’ lectures and seminars. Apart from that, we also had to produce new questions, twenty-five in total, which would be used as the exam questions at the end of each block, additionally with the creation of questions that would explain how to successfully cite articles, books, treaties and other important documents in Chicago, Turabian and APA citation styles. As Dr. Costa López informed us that, most students getting accepted to the BA IRIO programme, had little to no knowledge about the history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Thus, it came as an interesting challenge to try and work on the feedback as a teacher, while also as a student who is clueless about the events of the past. Coming from a country that is rich in history, I was very fortunate to have teachers and professors throughout my academic experience, who had interesting and engaging methods to impart historical knowledge to their students, making it appear as something very close to us.

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I still remember my teacher in the last grade of High School, when she used to show us documentaries about the Second World War, brought to class primary sources from governmental agencies and generally used methods other than only a book to teach us about the importance of history in our lives. All the same, coming as a Pre-Master student in the city of Groningen, I had to find ways to understand the IR discipline and my historical knowledge offered me the means to succeed to go through with the actual MA programme.

Taking everything into account, I found myself gathering books I already had in my house, collecting notes from the MA seminars, while also search online materials, in order to be able to provide the professors and students with substantial knowledge and sources.

IV. PLACEMENT ANALYSIS

Getting assigned to work on each week, I started with Power Politics from HIR I and moved further to Imperialism and Nationalism. While I had the opportunity to receive further education on the incidents of the 19th century, studying the textbook and searching for complementary sources felt like reading a multi-paged book about all the proceedings of that century.

More particularly, the time when the thesis started and especially when I was working on Imperialism was very critical, as the world was shocked by the murder of an African American man by a police officer in the United States (US) (BBC, 2020). Throughout the world, marches and riots erupted, and the subjects of imperialism and colonialism came to the surface. As part of the ‘Imperialism’ week was the case of the ‘Triangular Slave Trade’ and generally the issue of slavery, I deemed it necessary to include information accessible to the students that would describe the process; so that they can understand how slavery has impacted the world we live now. For that reason, I started incorporating external links from newspapers, governmental bodies (such as the U.S. government’s website) and other sources, while also videos and TV series found in international streaming platforms such as Netflix.

In addition to that, I found it equally important to provide students with the official documents of the treaties that they learned about on the lectures, such as the ‘Treaty of Versailles’ (Link A), the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ (Link B), the ‘Truman Doctrine’ (Link C) and other documents crucial for the discipline of IR. When I was searching about the potential MA programme of my choice through the University of Groningen’s online site, I came across the ‘Master’s Programme in Modern History and International Relations’. Having this in mind, I firmly believed that by supplying the students with primary sources of historical character, the ones who would be more interested would engage with them and maybe find themselves wanting to pursue the aforementioned MA programme in the future.

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7 Link A: Linking the original 1919 ‘Treaty of Versailles’.

Link B: Linking the original 1948 ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ along with others.

Link C: Linking the original 1947 ‘Truman Doctrine’ between the U.S and Greece-Turkey.

Apart from using links and images, using sketches in order to help students with comprehending particular abbreviations and theories, was another way of developing pedagogical tools. Cases such as the ‘domino effect’ (Sketch A) or the ‘Mutual Assured Destruction – M.A.D) about the Cold War (Sketch B) would be more understandable through existing sketches found on the web. At the same time, judging by my own experience and knowing the general fact that some people tend to remember better certain events when exposed to pictures, incorporating sketches was another way of extending the textbook’s knowledge.

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8 Sketch A: The so-called ‘domino effect’.

Sketch B: Explaining the ‘M.A.D’ abbreviation.

Apart from the textbook’s questions, there were tests entailing geography questions for the students that had no knowledge about certain parts of the world. Specifically in the HIR II course, attaching maps explaining particular terms such as the “Warsaw Pact” (Map A) or events such as the ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ (Map B) were important.

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9 Map A: The so-called ‘Warsaw Pact’ in Europe.

Map B: Explaining the importance of the ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’.

Last but not least, Ms. Kolkman along with our supervisor Dr. Costa López and I, created a test called ‘Citations’, where we developed questions according to the pattern of the existing ones. There we explained how to successfully use the Chicago, Turabian and APA citation styles, which are the most commonly used in the discipline of IR. In this part I used the sources I had already incorporated in the original tests, in order for the students to be able to reference them correctly in a potential research paper or exam (Citation A; B; C).

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10 Citation A: A question about how to reference the ‘Treaty of Versailles’ in APA style.

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11 Citation C: A question about how to in-text reference Immanuel Kant’s ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’.

V. REFLECTING ON THE PLACEMENT

After the internship was over, I felt like a chapter of my academic life was ending as well. Since I only had to finish my thesis, our daily meetings with Dr. Costa López and Ms. Kolkman were something I looked forward to every week, because we not only discussed about our ideas and the progress of the placement, but also about our worries regarding the future. I am very grateful about this opportunity, because I grew as a student, as a potential professional in either History or the IR fields and generally as a person.

More specifically, studying everyday about history of the 19th_{and 20}th_centuries

provided me with extensive knowledge that in different case, I would not have the chance to acquire. Before applying to the MA European Integration programme, I was seriously considering pursuing a MA in political history, or something related. Now that I finished this placement as a Research Intern to the HIR courses, I can say that I fulfilled this idea through my internship. History and IR are inter-connected; there would be no IR if there would be no world wars, the Cold War, or international actors. A significant part of the European integration process belongs to the European history and thus I feel that this internship complemented the MA European Integration programme perfectly. While I and Ms. Kolkman both hold our undergraduate degrees in History, many students may have other disciplines as their major and this research placement can offer notable insights, covering numerous aspects of the global history. At the same time, apart from my knowledge, my organization and cooperation skills were amplified. Writing about noteworthy information about prominent leaders and events, and presenting that information in a limited manner so that young students can be able to comprehend, was something I mastered during this internship, as I produced feedback for more than four hundred questions. Whenever there was a gap or a query, I felt at ease contacting both our supervisor and my fellow colleague, asking for their input, while I also made sure I was always available to give help or fix any potential issues, either about the questions or the general placement. I firmly

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believe that both Dr. Costa López and Ms. Kolkman with their confident and supportive attitude, helped me to motivate myself and keep trying to efficiently work on the questions every day, during a very stressing period.

Moreover, the online placement had its benefits and a few drawbacks, but when compared to having no internship at all, is completely miniscule. Along with the very positive and helpful environment, I received help whenever it was needed by both my supervisor, my internship colleague, as well as my degree supervisor Ms. Mascarell-Ordovas. Handling information through the internet and communicating through video calls and emails can sometimes feel impersonal or even unnatural, there was not a moment that I felt I was ‘alone’ in this internship and I did not have the support I needed. And maybe this is the only drawback that I could include, that this research placement would be even more fulfilling if it was executed in an office somewhere at the University of Groningen. However, I still received great insights about academic software like Blackboard and I feel ready to handle any kind of program in my future workplaces.

VI. CONCLUSION

Taking everything into consideration, my participation to the ‘Research Placement in History of International Relations’ at the IRIO Department of the University of Groningen, was an astonishing opportunity that I am very grateful for. I strongly believe that in times like these, when online work and internships are required so that citizens can stay home and protected, the University of Groningen should definitely continue with this venture and offer more vacancies to its students.

Through my work as a ‘Research Intern’ to the HIR courses, I grew more confident about myself, my knowledge on international relations and the European history, as well as more secure in knowing that I can communicate efficiently with supervisors, colleagues, while also even students. This opportunity complemented the MA European Integration programme wonderfully and provided me with many skills needed for my future professional endeavors. Especially now that with the Covid-19 virus being around, there is a case that people will still need to work remotely from September onwards. Thus, I feel ready to take on any kind of job, knowing that I have already worked under such environment.

In times that feel very uncertain, it is always important to look back at history and realize how far we have come as a mankind. However, it is equally necessary to reflect on what still needs to be improved, or even abolished, such as traces of injustice and inequality, which are unfortunately still existent in our era. Completing this research placement, I would like to close my report with this thought, as this internship helped me to think about what I, as a historian and IR scholar can and should do, in order to make our world better.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

BBC. George Floyd: What happened in the final moments of his life. (2020, July 16).

Retrieved August 2, 2020, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52861726

Pew Research Center. More than nine-in-ten people worldwide live in countries with travel restrictions amid Covid-19. (2020, April 1). Retrieved August 2, 2020, from

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/01/more-than-nine-in-ten-people-worldwide-live-in-countries-with-travel-restrictions-amid-covid-19/

World Health Organization. Coronavirus. Retrieved August 2, 2020, from

PLACEMENT REPORT