The last Research Traineeship programme has ended for now: ‘We’ll bring it back as soon as we can’
photography: Elif Kırankaya
Amsterdam’s attitude to sex work, politeness in historical Arabic letters and malaria in the Middle Ages: again this year, there was a wide variety of topics in the Research Traineeship programme. On Friday 30 August, the trainees finished the last of these projects for now.
The Research Traineeship programme is intended to provide students with an accessible introduction to a career as a researcher. They spend one semester working on a research study of their supervisors, for which they receive payment. This year’s programme again yielded some excellent results, ranging from almost completed articles to conference presentations and even a successful grant application to do further research.
‘There’s never been an exhibition on artistic interventions in infrastructure, because it’s difficult to bring such site-specific works together,’ explains Inaya Basu, who – together with Rebecca Billi – conducted research on infrastructure and art. ‘Our follow-up proposal is to investigate how we can approach a situation of this kind.’
Starting again as soon as possible
‘The Research Traineeship is one of those projects that delivers a lot with little investment,’ says Job Weststrate, who as a policy officer has been responsible for the project's finances in recent years. 'Of the first 20 trainees who participated in 2016, eight have been awarded PhD positions. Three of them have even already been promoted.'
Nevertheless, for financial reasons, it was decided not to restart the Traineeship next year. ‘I think we all understand that the salary of university staff weighs more heavily at the moment,’ says Weststrate, ‘but know that we want to restart the project as soon as we can.’
University associate professor Rens Tacoma, who participated in the project four times as a supervisor, concurs. 'Colleagues from other universities have always looked at this project with mild jealousy. I understand that it's going on the shelf for now, but hope it can be taken off there again as soon as possible.'