HCSS Internship Blog and Interviews
Hey Tom, can you tell be about your background, for example, where you’re from, your education, and any previous work experiences you had before joining us at HCSS?
Hey! My name is Tom Connolly and I’m from a town called Dún Laoghaire in County Dublin, Ireland. I’ve been living abroad for a number of years now and started working at HCSS in August 2023. It’s been a wonderful experience so far! Before that I did my honours bachelor’s degree at Trinity College Dublin and I studied abroad in Switzerland during my third year. I’ve always loved to travel and see a bit more of the world, so after my graduation I moved to Brussels to take up a speechwriting traineeship with a Member of the European Parliament. I wrote speeches for both the Security-Defence and the Foreign Affairs Committees, as well as the EU Delegations for Relations with Russia and Afghanistan and was also responsible for drafting opinion pieces, reports, and other briefs. But 2022 was no ordinary year, as we all know. With the onset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the fallout of the Taliban takeover, there was certainly no shortage of work to be done in early 2022 and I learnt a great deal during a very formative traineeship travelling between Brussels and Strasbourg for parliamentary duties. It was during this time that I decided to pursue the study of International Relations further down the line, after seeing first hand the number of crises and conflicts proliferating around the world and the need to address these at the intergovernmental level. I spent a lot of time in France when I was younger and in college I studied Classics and French at Trinity. Naturally this made me want to move to Paris to further improve my language skills which I did after my traineeship in Brussels wrapped up. Fast forward a year or so, I officially started my Masters at Leiden University in February 2023. I applied to HCSS last summer to get more experience with practical policy-making in the strategic think tank, one with enough of an academic orientation where I could further expand my understanding and skills in the intersection between history and conflict studies. I haven’t looked back since!
So, at HCSS you work as a general intern. Can you tell me a bit about the responsibilities and projects you are involved with? And what is your workload like?
The workload at HCSS is very diverse and frankly no two days are quite the same! From the get-go you are assigned to a variety of Strategic Analysts working on things like policy recommendations to geopolitical risk assessments and regional security analyses. How it works is that throughout the week you will build your research on your assigned topics – so for me I was usually working on coercion in the international system, issues to do with hybrid threats, and assessing the strategic military stability of the Netherlands – and this input will go towards co-writing studies for publication. It’s great to be able to contribute to work that will have a real-world impact, since many of HCSS’ clients are political decision makers in the Netherlands, as well as from international and regional organisations. It was also a great opportunity to be able to have my name on some of my first publications and the PR team here are great for helping interns towards getting their name on their first papers. Asides from desk research and group projects, HCSS hosts a number of events. Interns help to organise these events which have included a transatlantic dialogue on contemporary warfare to debating the dynamics of emerging conflicts, including the Israel-Hamas War. The events are all very timely and engaging and I learnt a lot from not only being a fly on the wall for these high-level events, but it is also a perfect opportunity to build your professional network with guests coming from all over the world.
You mentioned events, have you taken part in any workshops or training sessions during your internship? Could you provide some details?
HCSS is heavily invested in ensuring that interns get the most out of their time working in a think tank. Because our approach to research combines both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, time is put aside to completing workshops that prepare interns for interpreting data and using data software for papers and reports. Coming from a humanities background myself, I found this aspect of the internship particularly helpful since I had just limited experience with data software beforehand but am now very comfortable with making use of it for my research thanks to the Data Scientists at HCSS who guide you through the learning process. These are the sorts of skills you can really put to use in your future career. I also found the frequent guest lectures to be of great use. Here, we got to learn from many seasoned industry experts working in international affairs: from an EU security sector reform expert working in Somalia and Mali, to a humanitarian aid professional that worked in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, and finally to the former Dutch ambassador to Brazil, Spain, Greece, and Turkey who taught us the art of negotiation during political and diplomatic crises.
Nice, have you worked on any specific project or tasks during the internship that you found particularly enjoyable?
I was asked to co-author the Socio-Political Instability Survey which was my favourite assignment to work on. This is an ongoing project which assesses the short-term likelihood and location of volatility globally using multiple-choice questions, with input coming from our think tank’s professional network of policymakers, academics, and practitioners. Research is carried out every 90 days on a rolling-basis. It was an exciting project that gave HCSS great insights into geopolitical developments and allowed me to hone my data software and visualisation skills. Topics included the future prospects of the Russia-Ukraine War, what recurrent U.S. Republican presidencies could mean for multilateralism and global order, and how Europe should navigate a potential China-Taiwan conflict. The results of the open-ended questions were gained through quantitative and qualitative discourse analysis. It was an exciting project to be a part of and was rewarding to see what we could produce as a team, on topics that are very timely and relevant politically as we move into 2024.
You mentioned that the survey look at a range of current affairs topics, what other research topics have you worked on at HCSS, and were there any that were entirely new to you?
Due to the breadth of topics that HCSS works on there is a chance that you will get assigned to projects you have little to no prior experience with. But this is all a part of the learning experience and it should be seen as an opportunity to learn something new outside of your traditional ‘comfort zone’ of academia! For me, a totally new area was working on Critical Raw Materials in the context of the Dutch strategic energy supply. Since the security of supply is a key concern of the national interest of every government around the world, this was an exciting project to learn from especially as we transition towards a greener future free from fossil fuels. The Strategic Analysts working in this field are at the top of their game, as are the rest within HCSS, so having the chance the collaborate with them means you will not only boost your analytical thinking but also strengthen your approach to conducting research on increasingly complex global issues. This is one of the key reasons why HCSS has been such a transformative internship for me. In addition to energy security, I also enjoyed working on the Strategic Monitor project for the Dutch government which we completed alongside the Clingendael Institute, as well researching aspects of international humanitarian law, and finally to examining the development of hybrid threats and coercive diplomacy in international relations.
This interview was conducted by HCSS PR and Communications Assistant, Alessandra Barrow
Experts
Related Content
