Internship Report
Personal Details
Student Name Aideen O’Donovan (S3790304)
Address C189,
Winschoterdiep 46, 9723AC,
Groningen Netherlands
Telephone Number +353 83 876 6267
E-mail a.a.odonovan@student.rug.nl
Placement Provider’s Details
Placement Provider’s Name The Rights Lab
Address Highfield House,
University of Nottingham, University Park,
Nottingham, NG7 2RD, England
Telephone Number +44 (0) 115 82 83072
E-mail rightslab@nottingham.ac.uk
Placement Details
Start Date of Placement 28th January 2019 End Date of Placement 26th March 2019 Work Times and Duration Week One: 36
Week Two: 34.5 Week Three: 37.75 Week Four: 33.75 Week Five: 35 Week Six: 24.75 Week Seven: 36.5 Week Seven: 33.75 Week Eight: 8 Total Hours: 280
External Supervisor Nathalie Walters (Head of Operations) Supervising Lecturer Dr. Julia Martinez-Arino
Evaluation of Placement a. Tasks Performed
The work performed over the duration of the placement can be divided into two categories –the (1) Global Slavery Index governmental assessment, and (2) Other Work.
Global Slavery Index
For the first day working on the Global Slavery Index Project I partook in training along with four colleagues aimed at familiarising us with the Index and how to use the Legacy Hub – the database used to collect information. For the area of research being considered (Governmental Response), we were part of the team that would cover the four of five Milestones – areas of focus which were
additionally subdivided into indicators aimed at establishing the degree to which governmental bodies were responding to the challenges faced in regards to the issue of modern slavery. The remaining Milestone was completed by a team in Australia working with the Walk Free Foundation. The training enabled me to perform the tasks outlined below to an extensive degree.
The research for the project was done on a country-by-country basis, and over the duration of my time spent on the project I completed work on fifteen countries1. My team leader, Angharad Smith, assigned countries to me, and aimed to give me countries with interesting religious or conflict dynamics that she felt would interest me and be specifically suited to my studies, such as Mauritania, Sweden, the Philippines, Sudan and Bahrain, among others. The research conducted generally took place in stages:
Read the indicator.
Read the entries provided in previous reporting periods (extending back to 2014).
Conduct qualitative research to ascertain if the indicator is met, continues to be met, or is not longer met. This is done by; reading relevant reports such as the Trafficking in Persons Report, or Findings of the Worst Forms of Child Labour Report; searching databases such as the Slavery in Domestic Legislation database available through Queens University, Belfast, or those available through the International Organisation for Migrations website; reading press releases by the government; and through newspaper articles.
Any relevant information was logged into the Legacy Hub.
If I could not find any information that has relevance to the indicator, or felt certain indicators needed to be fact-checked beyond the information provided through the above outlined research, I would search a database of Non-Governmental Organisations in each country that have been contacted by the Rights Lab in previous years and reach out to them.
Additionally, if they did not answer or none from a certain country had been contacted before (as was the case with countries such as Paraguay and the Czech Republic), I would search for and contact new NGOs2 and enquire if they could provide information. They had the options of entering information to the Index by completing; an online survey; by questions asked over email, or; by skype interview. Over my time spent on the project I conducted two skype interviews, and collected information via email with six other countries.
Any relevant information provided was then logged into the Legacy Hub.
1 Countries Completed: (1) The Philippines, (2) Sudan, (3) Chad, (4) Mauritania, (5) Bahrain, (6) Paraguay, (7) Lebanon, (8) Sweden, (9) Portugal, (10) Mexico, (11) Madagascar, (12) Indonesia, (13) Bolivia, (14) Ireland, and (15) the Czech Republic.
2 Examples of NGOs which were contacted: (1) The Salvation Army, (2) Polaris, (3) IOM offices in each respective country.
Once all information has been logged and evaluated, I would decide if the indicator had been ‘met’ or ‘not met’, and my judgement would be
inserted into the researcher’s notes.
If there were ever any issues, such as uncertainty about whether an indicator is met or not, I would ask my team leader for assistance and she would evaluate and we would problem solve the issue together.
A significant portion of my entries were then quality assured by my team leader.
Toward the end of the project, I was asked by my team leader to help her in quality assuring indicators which had been flagged as not being sufficiently met.
This was specifically in reference to indicators within Milestone two that regarded legislation. For such indicators, it did not suffice to simply submit information from, for instance, the Trafficking in Persons Report, but instead it was necessary to find a primary source of the legislation itself. Finding relevant legislation was often acquired through the use of Google Translate, or by contacting a member of the team that could speak the relevant language and logging the translation.
Indicators which had been flagged were logged in an Excel sheet by my team leader, and where possible I would log if the applicable information had, or had not, been found. Given that these indicators were often complicated, and it was difficult as a result of wording to fully ensure if they had met the criteria,
meetings were conducted between my team leader and I regarding this where we would discuss and deliberate on the issues at hand and try to come a decision, which I would then log. Further to this, my team leader asked me to partake in a similar task aimed at conducting further NGO Outreach for countries which I had not personally worked on, such as the United Kingdom, and
Barbados, among others. The process undertaken was similar to the latter outlined.
Other Work
The portion of work assigned to the Rights Lab for the Global Slavery Index was completed ahead of schedule on the 15th March 2019. Therefore, for my
remaining time at the Lab I was assigned other work which can be divided further into two subgroups; writing briefing reports; and partaking in work on a database of Partnership Associates. This was not part of the plan outlined at the beginning of my time at the Lab.
In regards to the briefing papers which I co-authored, the Lab had been
contacted by the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) and asked to host a visit of parliamentarians from Namibia and Malawi. I was asked to carry out some research into the specific issues Namibia faced regarding modern slavery. For this, I conducted qualitative research into Namibia generally – ascertaining the population, religions practiced within the country, percentages of the population employed in each sector of the economy, and so on. From here, I deepened my focus, and acquired information from prominent Reports on the types of issues within modern slavery that they faced, and the severity to which this was taking place. I then drew, having conferred with a colleague, links between the issues at hand, and the projects which were currently being undertaken by the Rights Lab, and how they might be useful to the delegation visit. These projects include; a data programme aimed at digitally mapping the extent to which slavery is taking place on the map; the survivors programme in
which the experiences of those who have survived slavery are logged and
analysed; the governance programme in which the legislative mechanisms used to tackle modern slavery are analysed; and the business programme where specific focus is given to the economic cost of modern slavery and how to eliminate it within supply chains and the like. This was presented as a Briefing Document to senior colleagues within the Rights Lab and partner organisations, including the Gangmaster and Labour Abuse Authority, who used the information provided to prepare their presentations for the CPA delegation.
Finally, I was asked to further develop a spreadsheet that was to be used by the researchers within the Lab when searching for information or contacts with an outside organisation. The spreadsheet aimed to establish; (1) the organisation, (2) the member of the organisation, (3) what kind of organisations they were, (4) who within the Lab knew them, (5) whether these contacts were a ‘go’ or ‘no-go’, (6) which Assistant Director within the Lab knew them, and (7) their contact information. Upon starting my work on the spreadsheet there were over 400 contacts on the spreadsheet which had been given to Professor Kevin Bales CMG, Research Director at the Rights Lab and lecturer at the University of Nottingham as people who wanted to keep in contact with the Lab, e.g. for collaborative work opportunities. The information which had been inserted into the spreadsheet was sparse, so my first intention was to deepen the information logged – such as going through each contact and ascertaining if they still worked at the
organisation cited. If they did not, or if they were also connected to different organisations, this was inserted into the spreadsheet, along with a link to the applicable LinkedIn page. This was a task I performed using my own initiative.
While performing this task, I also logged what type of organisation each was, and how their work may relate to that of the Rights Lab, such as the Santa Marta Group, the Anglican Alliance and the Salvation Army. Once I had done this, I reached out to members of the Lab and asked to log their contacts.
b. Position within the Organisation
My formal position within the Rights Lab was that of Research Associate primarily working on the Global Slavery Index. Alongside this I was tasked with carrying out work for my external supervisor (Nathalie Walters), and others within the Lab, such as Sarah Kerr, Deputy Director.
c. The objectives of the placement? To what extent were they met? Did any problems arise? Were there unexpected outcomes? What went well and what didn’t go so well?
The learning outcomes and objectives outlined within my internship plan were to gain; (1) knowledge of method procedures, (2) a greater understanding of the issue of modern slavery and its nuances, (3) an ability to review, analyse and collect data points efficiently, and (4) better teamworking skills. I believe that I not only met these objectives, but surpassed them. I garnered a greater ability and knowledge of research procedures, and further to this I became very efficient in doing so. This is evident in the fact that, in comparison to the two
other full-time team members working on the Global Slavery Index government assessment who had been working on the Index since late November, I not only quickly learned to research as quickly as they did, but also to surpass them in time taken to complete a country. On average, they completed 2.5 countries a week, while at my highest rate of efficiency I was completing a new country every 9 hours, which meant I averaged approximately 4 countries a week.
Previously to working at the Lab, I had not codified qualitative information before, which was necessary when working with the Legacy Hub, thus great knowledge was gained from my time there. In order to fully answer the
indicators, of course, I had to familiarise myself greatly with the ins-and-outs of modern slavery, which developed further on issues and realities brought to my attention in certain modules I had undertaken during the first semester,
especially in regards to the human trafficking, the use of child soldiers, and sexual exploitation. Finally, my teamworking skills, which had been perhaps lacking within an academic setting based on the scholarly path I have
undertaken thus far (I did History and Politics for my BA which did not call for much team work, and to this point I only had two group projects within my MA programme), were developed significantly. I worked directly with my team leader and other members of the team on a continuous basis throughout my time working on the Index, and met with my external supervisor on a weekly basis to discuss my performance, areas to focus on, and what my aims should be for the coming week. Both of these instances have greatly developed my inter-personal and teamworking skills, as well as calling on me to be self-aware and evaluate my own work and what should be done to make sure a job is done to be a high standard. Additional skills and objectives which were met during my time at the Lab was the ability to conduct qualitative research by conducting interviews with outside sources which I found myself, as well as to evaluate information provided in a critical and efficient manner.
In terms of issues faced, I struggled at first in finding the confidence to ask for help when required, but over time this faded as I familiarised myself with the team and was made to feel very welcome by everyone at the Rights Lab.
An obvious unexpected outcome was that the Global Slavery Index project was completed ahead of time by approximately two weeks. This meant that the work asked of me extended beyond that which was initially outlined in my internship plan. This, I feel, was tackled with relative ease, however.
I found no issues related directly to the internship, and thoroughly enjoyed my time on placement. Unfortunately though, due to circumstances outside of my control with regards to my housing situation in Nottingham I had to leave the internship ahead of time by a few days. Nathalie, however, was very
understanding when I told her about this, and helped me to ensure that I could meet the mandatory hours to meet the criteria outlined by my home university.
