Internship at the QoG Institute
The Quality of Government Institute (QoG) is looking for highly motivated, self-driven interns who are interested in Quality of Government as a research area. The internship provides an excellent opportunity for the student to experience academic work on a day-to-day basis and in an international environment. During the internship, the student will have the opportunity to work with different research projects and with various researchers and to participate in seminars and other events organized by the QoG Institute as well as the Department of Political Science. An internship at the QoG Institute provides relevant experience, particularly for students interested in an academic career.
The application period for Spring 2027 is now open
The QoG Institute offers two to three internship positions during Autumn 2026. Please read the description carefully before applying
To apply for our internship program, please upload your CV, a cover letter, and an English writing sample here.
The final application date is 31 October 2026.
If you have any questions, please contact us via email at infoqog@pol.gu.se.
Please note that all decisions are made at the discretion of the program coordinator and are final. As this is an unpaid internship, final decisions cannot be appealed.
Internship - Description
Full-time, 20 weeks
QoG offers two internship tracks: a General Research internship and a Data internship.
The General Research internship gives interns the opportunity to:
- Experience the day-to-day work at the Institute
- Participate in seminars and other events organized by the institute and at the department of Political Science
- Assist with research summaries, literature reviews, and some data analysis
- Assist with administrative tasks
The Data Internship:
- Perform data wrangling and transformation using Python
- Support the collection of data from statistical agencies, particularly for local-level indicators
- Support data cleaning and validation using established data pipelines
- Assist in reviewing and updating codebooks during annual data updates
- Verify licensing and usage information for data sources included in the compilations
- Identify and report issues that arise during the data cleaning and processing stages
- Provide feedback and suggestions for improving data quality and data processing workflows
Internship tasks will vary in terms of the current projects’ needs.
Applicant Requirements:
- In order to apply, you must be a student currently enrolled in a master’s program that offers the opportunity to do an internship and intend to undertake this internship as an integral part of your academic curriculum, earning academic credits from your home university. The degree should be in Political Science, Global Studies, Data Science, Social Sciences, Economics, Statistics, IT, or a related field.
- Good organizational, documentation, and communication skills, with strong attention to detail and a good command of written and spoken English (QoG’s working language is English).
- Knowledge of statistical programs is advantageous.
The Data internship further requires:
- Basic to intermediate Python programming skills, particularly in data manipulation and wrangling.
- Familiarity with pandas and common Python data analysis libraries.
- Basic understanding of data cleaning, validation, and quality assurance.
- Familiarity with structured data formats such as CSV, Excel, JSON, or similar formats.
- Ability to work with and understand codebooks, metadata, and data documentation.
- Strong attention to detail, particularly when checking data, metadata, and licensing information.
- Basic knowledge of working with VS Code or Jupyter Notebooks.
- Basic knowledge of GitHub (optional).
- Familiarity with django framework (optional)