Placement Report

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Placement Report

Research Internship at the Moving Matters Research Group – Amsterdam

Institute for Social Science Research, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Student name : Cinintya Audori Fathin Student number : S3888150

Programme : MA International Relations Track : International Political Economy External supervisor : Dr. L.G.H. (Laurens) Bakker Placement coordinator : Mr. B.L. Aardema

Placement period : 10 August – 9 October, 2020

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The Placement program is a part of the Master program in the department of International Relations and International Organizations, Faculty of Arts, University of Groningen. In order to obtain their degree, the students of the program must take the internship activities for at least 280 hours. The range of the working types is not limited as long as it has an international orientation. However, as a master student majoring in International Political Economy (IPE), I expected to get the internship in line with my major. After a long time of searching, I finally did my placement as a research intern at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR), University of Amsterdam, specifically under the Moving Matters research group.

This internship report is a detailed description of the internship process and my reflection during the learning process I have undergone during and after the internship. I believe that gaining knowledge from the classes and textbooks is not enough to prepare us to face the real world's condition after graduation. As I experienced in the working circumstance before joining the master's program, I am convinced that doing an internship is very important to prepare the student for the job market and as a tool for them to upgrade their skill and explore networking. Personally, my internship was quite challenging because, at the same time, I also had to do the early phase of writing my thesis. Even though I could choose whether to start the internship first or write the thesis, I decided to start both of them almost simultaneously. I wanted to push myself to its limits, take both research internship, and write the thesis as my daily responsibility. Therefore, I could improve my multitasking skill as I know that it is a very important soft skill, especially in the working situation in my home country, Indonesia, when you are expected to do a lot of responsibilities at once.

It is worth mentioning that I got numerous valuable experiences during the whole internship process since this was my first time applying for a job opportunity internationally. Therefore, to make the reader understand and catch the important things I got from my decision and process for the internship, I conduct this report chronologically and divided into several parts. The first part of this report tells the period before the internship began, including my decision to do a research internship, how I found the opportunity, and my internship provider's description. The second part provides the detailed activities I have done during the internship, including how the internship was conducted during the pandemic of Covid-19 and the tasks and responsibilities I must fulfill every day. Moreover, this part also provides the significance of my tasks and responsibility for my expectation and future work. The third part explains the insightful personal evaluation I obtained after my internship period and the reflection on whether my internship expectations were fulfilled. Finally, this report's conclusion presents a summary of all of the information and a recommendation for future interns if they want to do the internship at AISSR.

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2. Before the Internship

2.1 Selection of placement

While discussing with my classmate about the placement, I had not decided in which field I would do my internship. To be honest, I was thinking in doing the internship in the field that I had never done before. During my second year of bachelor’s degree, I did two months internship at the ASEAN Secretary and Permanent Mission of Indonesia to ASEAN as an administrative intern. After my bachelor’s graduation at the end of 2017, I was asked by my former supervisor to help her did her research for six months. After that, I worked full-time as a research assistant in my former department (Public Policy and Management, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia) for one year. During my full-time job as a research assistant, I also worked as a project manager in the Institute for Governance and Public Affairs (IGPA) and a research organization called Forbil Institute. I finished all of the contract in the early of 2019. After that, I went to other city to do full-time internship for six months at the Indonesia's National Digital Literacy Movement under the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology as a research development staff and content writer. I was fully aware and familiar with what I had to face from my experience before I started to look for internship. The problem for me back than was finding what kind of job I wanted to do for the internship and finding the job.

In the end, I decided to do the internship as a policy analyst in international organizations, or research placement in one of the research institutions in Europe. I chose that field because I considered my personal goals to be a researcher in the national or international institutions in my home country and teaching. At first, I was confident to find the international organizations internship in the European countries outside the Netherlands. I wanted to explore my working experience in another country and challenge myself. I was planning to apply to the UN office either in Vienna or Brussel as a policy analyst intern. As a non-EU student, working under the international institutions in the European region is a big dream and, at the same time, also become a big challenge. However, as the Covid-19 pandemic hit the European countries in early of 2020, I decided to play save and looked for the internship in the Netherlands or in my home country, Indonesia. In the meantime, I also thought it would be great if I could do the internship that give me new insights and perspectives for the problem that my country is facing. Therefore, I tried to specify my internship search that could impact my country, such as the research internship that have evidence-based policy orientation in doing their research and relevant to Indonesia. When I decided to do that, I know that it would be difficult for me to find an internship with that kind of criteria. But I believed I could find one as I know that Dutch researchers did a lot of research concerning Indonesia's issues.

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2.2 Preparation and application process

After convincing myself to do the research internship, I started to seek the possibility to work in the Netherlands. However, since I know the Covid-19 affected so many things, including job opportunity, I also tried to look at my home country's alternatives. I explored some institutions in the Netherlands and focusing my search on several organizations, such as Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) located in Leiden, Dutch Research Institute for Transition (DRIFT) in Rotterdam, and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) in Den Haag. At first, I was hoping to do the internship at KITLV since they have many research projects related to Indonesia with an international orientation. However, after I sent them an email asking for an internship opportunity, all of them were replying with the same answer—they did not open for an internship due to the Covid-19 and all of their staff were working from home. The institutions I mentioned above were worried that I would not get any benefit from them as an intern since we could not meet in person. At that time, I thought that I would receive the same response for the next application. Therefore, I tried to contact some of the research institutions in the home countries I worked with before.

I got offered for three internship opportunity from Indonesia, but I was not really sure because none of them had an international orientation. I kept the internship information from my home country while still looked for the other opportunity in the Netherlands. I was lucky that I still keep in touch with some of my former lecturer from UGM. When we have had a casual meeting, I told them that I was looking for an internship in here in order to obtain the degree. Luckily, one of them informed me that the department had been worked together several years ago with one of the research institute from the Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA) and gave me the contact of Dr. Gerben Nooteboom. I sent an email to Dr. Nooteboom asking for internship opportunity and attached my CV and internship requirements. He responded positively a few days later and we arranged an online meeting. The meeting was conducted mainly to know my professional background and my expectations for the internship. After the introduction meeting and knowing what kind of internship I wanted to do, Dr. Nooteboom suggested several name with the institutions that I could contact for the internship occasion, namely IHE Delft Institute for Water Education and the AISSR.

I mailed the IHE Delft, followed the advice Dr. Noteeboom. After the background check, the organization arranged an interview with me. However, my application at IHE Delft did not go well because I did not have enough experience at water governance even though I wanted to study it for my home country. Several days after that I contacted Dr. Laurens Bakker from AISSR and he replied with enthusiasm. When we had a meeting, he told me that he works as a group leader at Moving Matters research group under AISSR. He explained the new project that they just started. It is about the capital city relocation taking Indonesia as a case study. Moreover, they tried to capture the established cases of capital relocation around the world so it can be lesson learned for Indonesia in developing their new capital city. Indeed, it was

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the job that fit me; working on something that directly impacted my home country and an international orientation. We agreed to start the internship as soon as possible and he was willing to become my internship supervisor. After the meeting, I contacted Mr. Aardema as my internship coordinator to approve my placement plan and he also helped me a lot in arranging the internship contract during the summer holiday. After finished the administrative and formality arrangement, I started the internship officially from the August 10th_{to the October 9}th_{, 2020.}

2.3 Expectations

Before signing the contract, I did brief research about the Moving Matters research group and also the project that I would do. My friend was also informed who is studying at one of their PhD programme that the institution has a good reputation on the social science research and has a significant contribution to projects relating to Indonesia. The main reason why I chose this place for my internship is because currently they are running a new project relating to Indonesia's capital city relocation. Because the project was still in the early phase of development, I was expected to help the team frame the research orientation. From that point, I was expecting to improve my research skill especially on the critical review skill. It was difficult for me to criticize or give opinion about certain concepts or issues because it was not the habits that I used during my bachelor's degree in Indonesia. We usually just try to understand and gain more information without seeing what is missing from the discussion. Moreover, I was so excited to join the research group because I could gain new perspective on social and political science, particularly from the anthropological point of view. I had no idea before that anthropology studies also can cover up international issues. By doing literature review and comparison studies from several countries about the topic of moving capital, I was expecting to have the ability to see political economy and international relations problems from the bottom-up point of view. Also, by doing the research internship together with the writing process of my thesis, I wanted to improve my time management skill as the preparation for me to enter a real academic career in the future.

2.4 AISSR – Moving Matters Research Group

The Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR) is the institute that unites all research in the social science research fields under the Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA). Most of the research conducted by the research groups under AISSR focuses on contemporary social and political societies' functioning and their interrelationship from a historical point of view, comparatively and empirically. The research programme is organized into thematical focused from several disciplines, such as sociology, planning & development studies, political sciences and anthropology. Moving Matters programme/research group focuses on the social consequences of the mobility of people and goods from the local to the transnational practices—the research's approach is mostly sociological and anthropological, emphasizing historical dimension. I worked directly under the supervision of the programme group leader, Dr. Laurens Bakker.

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3. During the Internship

3.1 Internship during Covid-19 Pandemic

Due to the uncertain circumstances caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, I had to do my internship from home. The internship started on the 10th_{of August and ended on 9}th_of October, 2020. During the discussion with Dr. Bakker, the team expected me to work from Amsterdam's office once or twice a week if the situation were being controlled. They considered it difficult for me to work more than twice a week in the office because I lived in Groningen and could not move to Amsterdam because I could not come to the office every day. However, after several weeks of the internship began, Dr. Bakker told me that it was impossible to join the office team because the limitation of people to enter the university buildings, further Dr. Bakker only comes to the office every Friday. Therefore, we decided to conduct every meeting and discussions online. What is more, scheduled meeting and workshop could no longer possible to be conducted. Personally, it was very difficult working from home because the situation were not conducive. Fortunately, Groningen's city library is open, so I spent most of my working time there.

3.2 Task and Responsibility

My tasks and responsibilities at the Moving Matters (MoMat) research group were related to their project on Indonesia’s capital city relocation from Jakarta to Kalimantan. Since I started the internship when the project was still in the early phase of development, I was asked by Dr. Bakker as my supervisor to help them in doing the literature review regarding the existed cases of countries that already moved their capital city. From these activities, I was also expected to shape the research's focus and choose which countries would learn for Indonesia. I was very nervous because it was my first time helping the research group frame the whole research project. Moreover, my supervisor also did not give me specific instructions on how I should start and frame the research because he wanted me to put my knowledge and perspective based on my background study to the project. After I could find the countries that focus on the review, I needed to compare countries and put Indonesia's context on it. The detail of these tasks is described in the following paragraphs.

At first, I thought it would not consume much time deciding the best countries I could use as a comparative study. But after I started to work on it, I realized that I was wrong. I spent almost a month searching for countries. In the first two weeks, I focused my task on collecting data about the countries that have moved their capital city in the last 100 years. Actually, there were around more that 50 countries moved their capital city within a decade. However, 30 countries permanently moved their capital city, and I only found nine countries with a deep explanation and analysis of their relocation. During the first step of my research, I realized that the discussion on moving capital city was not much, especially if when I tried to look more deeply from the political economy point of view. Despite the deficiency of the current literature (published in the last 10 years) discussing countries that moved their capital

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city, the existing literature (mostly published around the 1970s-1990s) was mostly examined from the planning and development point of view. Therefore, the first step of my research was very challenging and time-consuming. I understood why MoMat brought this topic up because we need to focus more on the planning and development process and the impact of the relocation to the national political economic conditions and the population. As long as I did the literature research, I also found that in many cases of developing countries, the relocation of capital city also directly impacted their relation to the international regime, especially how the new national condition dealt with the international regimes.

After I finished collecting the information regarding the countries that moved their capital city within 100 years and gave the report to Dr. Bakker, I started to worked on checking the background of the capital relocation of the nine countries—Brazil, Australia, Nigeria, Russia, New Zealand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, and Pakistan. I tried to focus specifically on social, political, and economic reasons. Additionally, I also put extra attention to the relocation background that could become the lessons learned for Indonesia. Indeed, I already researched the reasons why Indonesia wants to move to the capital city. After the nine countries' background checking, I decided to narrow the options into three countries, such as Brazil, Nigeria, and Myanmar. The next step was doing the database search from thus three countries concerning the reasons they moved their capital, how they moved their capital, the history of political and power relationships of the relocation, how they decided the new location, and did the new location meet the expectation of the successor.

On the sidelines doing the research, I also tried to gain additional information about Indonesia's capital relocation. I did this because I had to make sure that I knew what I looked for in the literature. In doing that, I contacted my friend, who works at the Ministry of National Development Planning of the Republic of Indonesia (Bappenas), to arrange a meeting with their staff that work with the capital relocation preparation. Bappenas leads the project of capital city relocation in Indonesia and coordinates with several related ministries. I conducted a meeting with Bappenas’s staff, who directly help the Ministry formulate the relocation master plan on September 11st_{, 2020. We talked a lot about our project and} Indonesia's government's preparation for the relocation, especially during the economic crisis due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I noted several important points from the discussion. I thought I could not get this information from the literature. The information related to the variables that I have got from reviewing the pilot countries, such as the power relation, political reasons, economic reasons, and other issues that arose after the pandemic breakout. After the discussion task, I found that what happened in Indonesia have had happened in other countries. Therefore, it is very important to develop the research that can be used as a reflection. The country that wants to move their capital city can anticipate what might happen during and after the process.

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During the online internship, I did not have enough opportunity to interact with other research groups and mostly communicate only with Dr. Bakker. However, in the middle of the internship got a chance to discuss the project with two members of the AISSR. Dr. Nooteboom and Ms. Arum Chandra were very helpful and gave me feedback and advice during the writing process, even though they were not members of this project. I was also responsible for making a daily report for Dr. Bakker and usually sent it every one or two weeks, depending on the searching and reading process's difficulty.

On the 24th_{of September, I sent the first full draft of my work to Dr. Bakker and he was} satisfied with the result. He also found out that the materials I delivered was interesting. From the first draft, I got some notes from Dr. Bakker to give him the literature list that I have got but turned out not to be useful. From that, we could know what to avoid on the future writing process. Moreover, I also needed to add some points from new literatures on whether the relocation from the three countries meet the initial expectations or not. It was not an easy task because of the difficulty and tricky in finding the literature and because I had to interpret the data I read from the literature carefully. I also had to pay extra attention to the literature's detailed information and look back from the literature I read at the beginning of the writing process. These activities could help me to avoid bias in writing and asynchronous result. In the end, not all the variables of reasons for capital relocation from the three countries could be covered in the second writing process. However, the conclusion regarding the new capital's meeting expectation showed that the chosen countries still have so much homework for their new established capital. There were so many dissatisfied points regarding the result of the relocation. The mismanagement and corrupt government mostly caused unmet expectations during the relocation process. Moreover, the data also showed that the lack of government's attention on the impact of relocation for their people, especially the disadvantaged society, generates uncontrollable urbanization, massive development of slum areas, conjunction, and economic and social inequality. This is the important point for countries that want to relocate their capital city, Indonesia, to prepare the relocation project properly by widening their perspective in city planning and development and the long-term impact on future society.

I finally sent the final draft of my work to Dr. Bakker a week before the internship ended. I used the rest of the week before the end of my internship to re-read the materials I got and make sure that I did not miss anything important. I also re-arrange the literature and upload it to the online folders so the people who will work on the project after me can easily access and find what they need.

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4. After the Internship

4.1 Personal learning outcomes

A few days have passed since my last day of the online internship, thus I am fully aware that I got so many significant experiences that directly improve my skill, particularly on doing research and time management. Basically, I did not feel the internship's searching process was hard since I already experienced how to look for a job opportunity, particularly from my colleagues. But it turned out to be challenging during the internship process. I recognize that the organization did not put too much pressure on my work. I admit that I worked with the privilege of having the freedom to develop my work direction. At the beginning, I thought it would make my work easier as long as I stick to the schedule. However, it was kind of difficult for me to decide what kind of activities I should do first and what to do next. It was because, during my working experience, I usually worked under clear directions and deadlines. I usually only did what was being asked. Therefore, the working ambiance I got during the internship, personally pushed myself to develop my ability to be independent in managing work and be more initiative. Because at the beginning of the internship, both Dr. Bakker and I agreed not to intervene, and good management is very important to obtain the main goals of the work. I was not expecting this kind of development at the beginning of my internship plan. However, it was the most valuable improvement in my working life.

Moreover, it was equally important to mention that I could improve my ability to manage my emotions and personal problems with the work. Reminding that right before the internship began, I experienced some mental breakdowns stimulated by several factors. It was hard for me and even harder to cope with that thing and get back to work. Also, my double responsibilities on the internship and doing the thesis put me in a situation where I had to prioritize myself. From that point, I fulfilled my daily goals for those two work, although it felt so tough at the beginning. However, I must admit that I feel like I can do and give better results on my work performance. The fact that I had to split my time between two important things (thesis and internship) at a certain point just very exhausting. I had no problem with time management and achieving the goals on both works, but the work's content was. The task and topic of my internship and thesis are fundamentally different. Both things also have a very different approach of research. Therefore, not only splitting my time, but I also had to split my concentration and think on two foundationally different types of research simultaneously.

4.2 Reflection on the placement

I had a very insightful experience during the internship process. First, my personal goal to work under the responsibility that could help me gain new knowledge that impacted directly to Indonesia was fulfilled in this internship. I got so many fresh ideas and perspectives regarding the capital city relocation, which can become my capital to join Indonesia's governing board to assist the relocation process. Second, the opportunity I got from the

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internship also help me to broaden my network not only in the academic field but also in the bureaucrats level. It helps me a lot for my future career because it open my door to become a policy consultant for the government. Third, the most important things to mentions as an academia, from the internship with the MoMat research group, I can significantly develop my critical review capacity. Due to the literature's lack of information, I could exercise my skill on criticizing by gathering and reading more sources related to the topic. Finally, I can clearly use my background studies (public policy and international political economy) to frame and analyze the research. The concept of International Political Economy in IR is very wide and diverse, and even it is different based on the regions. But by doing the internship, I can apply my knowledge of IPE in a specific and applicative sector. Simultaneously, the research that I did during the internship also provided so many new knowledge that helped me widen my perspectives on my expertise.

5. Conclusion

Despite the short duration of the internship, the experience of working at the Momat research group was very valuable. I can improve both personal and professional skills. On a personal level, I was more mature, especially in managing my emotions and personal problems, so they did not impact my professional life. The internship also meets all of my expectations in the intellectual level. I gained so much improvement on my ability of research and time management. Although the internship circumstances were not always in a good terms due to the pandemic, I enjoyed the process.

I am very happy and consider myself lucky to have a chance to work under an institution that have a very good reputation on social and political sciences. I get to know first-hand the tasks, responsibilities, and working culture in one of the universities in Europe, especially in the Netherlands. However, I have to admit that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I could not work directly with the team, and it impacted the minimum interaction and network that I can build during the internship. Even though the internship also allowed me to connect with new people that was very insightful and diverse, I was expecting more regarding networking. But I believe with the experience I obtain from the placement, I can open and widen my international network after this master degree in the future.

The experience that I got in this organization also very useful for the future student who aims to do the internship here. However, the future student must aware about the research project conducts by AISSR because not every project put extra attention on the international orientation. The future student can contact and have discussion with the board of the organization, and conduct an independent research about the existing project before apply to the organization.

Placement Report