The Ditchley Foundation

Marina Adami, BA Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Final Year Undergraduate, Remote Working

Work Projects

The internship projects aims were to consolidate and expand Ditchley’s network of contacts. One way we did this involved researching individuals already in Ditchley’s network and classifying them according to guidelines to determine their level and area of expertise. Moreover, we also researched unaffiliated organisations pertinent to areas that Ditchley would like to expand into and conducted a quantitative analysis of the existing network to identify its strengths and weaknesses.

The achievements that I was most proud of were identifying interesting and innovative local organisations that Ditchley may like to connect with, as well as developing and becoming more confident in statistical analysis and the R programming language. I feel that I have made tangible progress in my analytical skills, as well as having learnt many interesting facts about places and people that I found out during my research.

The variety of work meant that I was always learning, and I never got bored. Ditchley was very welcoming and supportive to its interns: we had several contacts in case of issues or even mundane questions, two professionals aiding and guiding us directly in the work, and daily meetings to make sure that everyone was on the same page. I always felt comfortable asking questions and admitting when I needed help with the work. There were also weekly social calls which we used to organise friendly debates around current world issues. These occasions were always informative and enjoyable.

Daily Life

Overall, I found working from home a comfortable and flexible arrangement, although I did my best to maintain a regular work schedule and consciously allocate time both to work and to unwind in the evenings.

My routine consisted of beginning around 9:30 in the morning, checking my messages from my supervisors and teammates, checking my google calendar to note the time of any Zoom meetings, and then getting on with the research or analysis as necessary. I took a break for lunch around 1pm, and then worked until 5 or 6pm, depending on how much I still needed to do. Afterwards, I would check my personal emails, and do some admin as necessary, and then switch off my computer and spend time with my family.

I tried to make my time off varied and relaxing: I like cooking, reading, and when I felt tired, I would unwind with a film. Sticking to this routine helped me not get too stressed, and to begin each day feeling refreshed and focused.

Lasting Impressions

Overall, my internship at the Ditchley Foundation was a very varied and enjoyable experience. The variety of projects available meant that we had some choice to focus on the ones we found most interesting and that the work never became repetitive. I also enjoyed working alongside other interns and getting to know them as people during our weekly social calls as well.

I feel that I gained important quantitative analysis abilities from this internship, as well as developing important skills for the workplace, such as multitasking and working as part of a team. I am now also much more comfortable with video calls in a professional setting, which we are all likely to have to keep using for a while.

The experience has opened my mind to different career possibilities in research for charities or thinktanks, which I had not considered thus far. It has also led me to focus on my digital, and especially programming skills, which I now plan to keep developing on my own. Working for Ditchley has reminded me of the importance of flexibility and of trying new things outside of my comfort zone, that nobody expects perfection, but that what's most important is putting in the work and the effort.

What advice would you give to future interns?

Use this experience to step out of your comfort zone and try something new!

Lucas Davison, Lady Margaret Hall, Second Year Undergraduate, BA Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Remote Working

Work Projects

My role as an intern at the Ditchley Foundation was to help consolidate and expand their network of individuals involved with the foundation. As a foundation with a primary focus on bringing together high-profile individuals from across the world with a variety of expertise, the team of interns was tasked with organising the foundations database of individuals based on their knowledge and experience. This task was to make the process of finding suitable people for conferences more efficient and effective. Most of this work was done independently but with frequent check-ins from supervisors to ensure that our research and classification was on the right track. As a team of over 10 interns we made considerable progress on this research and, by the end of my 6 weeks, the foundations database had been given a serious overhaul that contained more specific information about these individuals.

Alongside this work, we were given a larger task of attempting to expand the database of individuals, with a specific focus on regions in the UK that have traditionally been left out of the political and business bubble that is primarily contained by London. With frequent supervision we were able to construct some potential individuals to contact which will no

doubt help the foundation to expand on their motto to ‘Think new things, Make new connections.’

In the last two weeks of the programme I was also able to work on the task of providing some data visualisations of the foundations network using a data analysis programming language. This work was closely supervised and found results that not only confirmed our previous findings during the research stage but also opened up new discussions about the make-up of the network such as the gender disparity. We presented these findings to the larger intern team at the end of the programme.

Daily Life

The internship programme at the Ditchley foundation was conducted remotely for all interns. As the foundation is based at the Ditchley Estate in Oxfordshire with limited onsite workspace they were in the unique position where they had offered the same internship remotely in previous years. This meant that working remotely was convenient and worked smoothly.

As the internship was primarily research focused much of my daily routine was spent on working independently on the foundations database. We were split into smaller teams of interns and we tried to make a habit of calling each other every morning to ensure we were all on the right track. This was a nice opportunity to meet new people even in a remote setting and to ensure that we all understood the work which was necessary as we were often working on collaborative spreadsheets.

Meetings would also happen twice a week with all the teams together in order to share ideas and gauge the progress of the work on a larger scale. Having a large team of interns also gave us the opportunity to run a social hour on Friday afternoons where one intern would present and topic and then lead a discussion. While initially a bit stilted, everyone quickly became involved in this hour and it became an interesting opportunity to hear from people with contrasting backgrounds. I took the opportunity to lead a discussion about democracy in the world which turned into a fascinating debate about how young people can change levels of participation in politics. This discussion was even joined by the Director of the foundation who provided a unique insight into the politics side of the debate from his experience in public service. Other than that, I would often go for long walks after spending all day at my desk, which was a much-needed activity to get away from the remote working environment which could become tiresome.

Lasting Impressions

On starting my internship at the Ditchley Foundation I was initially expecting 6 weeks of mainly independent research work. Although this was a significant portion of the work, I was pleasantly surprised to find how collaborative the working environment would actually be. As a member of a large team of interns, it quickly became a great opportunity to meet people who were mostly at other universities and studying different disciplines. We were always treated seriously and pleasantly by our supervisors and I feel as though our work has made a significant contribution to the future work of the foundation, especially in our task of expanding their network of individuals.

The programme also provided me with an opportunity to improve my career skills, and also my academic work. The most valuable portion of the programme in this regard was my work on the data visualisation of the foundations network which allowed me to improve my programming skills which I imagine will be invaluable for my future career. I began the internship believing that I would like to pursue a career in policy making and the opportunity to work at a think tank like the Ditchley Foundation has only confirmed this further.

First Year Masters,MSt World Literatures in English, Remote Working

Work Projects

The project largely consisted of researching and writing a paper assessing Ditchley’s evolving contributions to democracy and multilateralism using the foundations largely unexplored archives of conference papers and recorded discussions. I contributed to business development by making the archives accessible to the public by producing summary papers and interactive timelines on issues discussed at Ditchley such as the Anglo-American media and US-EU relations. I then formatted these for the Ditchley website or Smartify app. This enables future collaborators to have a greater understanding of what the foundation does and what it has already achieved.

Daily Life

Met weekly or bi-weekly with Ditchley's Impact Lead and the other intern (both were lovely) via Zoom. We each chose different topics, then would go through the archives (which date

back to 1958, but due to patchy digitisation we mostly focused on 21st century conferences). We peer-reviewed each other's work each week and then met to discuss what to change/ how we would take our research further. There was also an intern social every week which involved discussing current affairs or a topic of general interest via Zoom. I also had the opportunity to go visit Ditchley in person, which was an incredible opportunity to visit the property, to meet those who worked there, and to discuss what our research had produced with the foundation's Director.

Lasting Impressions

I really enjoyed my internship and I loved working with Ditchley. Everyone was incredibly interesting and welcoming (both virtually and in real life) and I have been asked to return for future collaboration and events, which is very exciting. It has definitely convinced me that I am interested in both a research-based and political career.

Second Year Undergraduate,English Language and Literature, Remote Working

Work Projects

For my internship with Ditchley, I was asked to create a number of written pieces on various works of art for Ditchley's new "smartify" app. This will enable visitors to Ditchley to hold up their smartphone to different artworks and learn various details about them. Initially, we were taken on a tour of the Ditchley Estate and given an opportunity to see each artwork in the flesh and take notes. After this, my colleague and I did some preliminary reading and research on each of the different pieces of artwork and were assisted by our supervisor in collating a body of information. Over the next few weeks, we took to writing an excerpt on each painting, highlighting interesting contextual detail about the figures portrayed and about the history of the Ditchley Estate whilst simultaneously creating an engaging narrative for readers.

Daily Life

My internship with Ditchley included a number of in-person visits to the Estate but my work and meetings were mainly conducted remotely. For the first two weeks, I spent the majority of my time using SOLO to research and read about as many of the paintings as I could whilst jotting down missing information. Every week, my fellow intern and I had a zoom meeting with our supervisor where we shared our challenges. In addition to this, the other intern and I met a number of times in person and online to discuss issues we had encountered and to socialise. Because the hours of my internship were relatively flexible, I was able to take regular breaks and take enough time for reading, with targets at the end of the week as my motivation.

Lasting Impressions

I really enjoyed my internship with Ditchley. It introduced me to a lifelong friend in my cointern and granted me the freedom to conduct solo research on a medium (paintings etc.) which I had never explored before. What's more, I felt very grateful to have the opportunity to explore Ditchley and see how the organisation operates. One of my favourite parts of being part of the team was being able to watch the selection of talks and seminars that Ditchley ran in July.