Ministry of Defence - Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC

Working with many new tools and pieces of software broadened my skillset and helped me gain

what I consider to be invaluable transferrable experience that can be applied to my future

career. I also valued the time saved by not having to commute to an office and was able to

consistently motivate myself despite not being in an office environment. I feel that I gained a

good representative experience of what working at a technology company would be like and I

feel like it has affirmed my career decisions so far and I can see myself pursuing a career in this

sector further in the future.

MINISTRY OF DEFENCE - DEVELOPMENT, CONCEPTS AND

DOCTRINE CENTRE (DCDC)

DPhil Population Health, a mixture of in-person and remote working

Work Projects

I worked as a research intern for the DCDC which is the MoD’s think tank who conduct and publish research and many different

sectors of policy. My main project was to carry out research on

the global and regional implications of peak populations on

different countries. That is, what happens when populations

reach all time highs before beginning to decrease again. I looked

at these implications through three main categories: economics,

environment and society. Within these I studied a number of

topics, including implications for water, energy, pollution, working age populations, urbanisation/rural-depopulation, health, women, investments in infrastructure etc.

I produced a 16-page research report on these issues as well as three infographics pages to be

used by the MoD in workshops and seminars on this. I also made a final presentation of my

project to the team and other members of the DCDC including a one-star commodore. Overall,

the project went very well and the work was incredibly interesting. I was supervised by two

desk officers who were both very professional and helpful. I also worked in coordination with

the graphic design team to produce the infographics. They all provided great support in my

project. The rest of the team at the DCDC were also friendly and did a great job at helping the

interns settle in.

Daily Life

This internship was hybrid and flexible as to when we had to be there. The first week of the

internship was all in person and I stayed at the base for the whole week, were we had a number

of activities, including: talks and briefs from people in the DCDC, red-teaming exercises, war-

gaming exercises, workshops, visits and general work together as a team. By the end of the

week, we met our project leads and were introduced to our projects. This first week really

enabled us to socialise with other interns and get to know the people working at the DCDC.

After this first week most of the work I conducted was remote.

I worked at home although I still had very regular

(almost daily) calls with either the DCDC team or my

project managers. This provided very good support for

the project despite most of it being done remotely. I

also returned to the DCDC toward the end of the

internship as there was an alumni day event which

allowed us to meet people who had previously done the

internship and see the team again before the end of the internship. After that I finished the

internship online and delivered my final presentation on teams.

Lasting Impressions

I really enjoyed the internship overall and the work was incredibly interesting. It was both close

enough to some aspects of my research that I could contribute a lot to it, yet still far enough

that I could learn while doing it. I feel like a learnt a great amount during the internship,

including on the topics I worked on but also about the DCDC, the MoD, working in government

and generally working as a team. I feel much more reassured about finding a job after my DPhil