Pragmatix Advisory Ltd (Alumni Host, Lincoln College

Lasting Impressions

The internship was instrumental for my future career goals. It provided me a very realistic

glimpse into what working at a museum would look like and confirmed that this is what I would

like to do in the future. The experience was really amazing and I’m very grateful I was able to

participate in the internship program.

My supervisors allowed me many opportunities to learn about every sector in the museum,

from conservation to education and curation. I gained a lot of knowledge about how museum

work and the kinds of jobs you can have within them. I think that the internship perfectly

supplemented my studies at oxford by offering a practical experience to the theoretical

knowledge I have been gaining in my course.

PRAGMATIX ADVISORY LTD (ALUMNI HOST, LINCOLN

COLLEGE)

Emmanuel Campion-Dye, Wadham College, BA Philosophy Politics and Economics,

Final Year Undergraduate, remote working

Work Projects

My internship was with Pragmatix Advisory, an

economics and strategy consultancy. I was working on

the initial research stages of a project which would

eventually become a rural strategy for some local

authorities in England. I had two main tasks. One

involved organising and taking notes in the interviews for a variety of people from the area –councillors, business leaders, charity heads, representatives conservation bodies and so on. The

other was looking at data for local authorities in the UK, as well as at smaller geographies, and

using the data to try to build up a picture of the relevant rural areas. I then combined these

streams by drafting a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats analysis.

Although my placement work was continuous with a larger company project, and thus there

was no single achievement from it, I felt proud of the smaller tasks I was able to achieve since I

felt I was genuinely contributing something useful – which tasks included literature reviews,

arranging meetings, and an internal company presentation. I was very well supported all

throughout this process. My supervisor facilitated my style of working and allowed me the

freedom to talk one-on-one when I felt I needed it and to get on with the task otherwise. I also

met periodically with the CEO of the company who discussed professional development with

me. Every week, we had an internal training session for some new skill.

Daily Life

My internship was remote, but we used an ‘open office’ arrangement, so we would be on a

Teams call for the whole of the working day. This took some adjusting to, but quickly became

normal, and allowed work to feel more social than if I hadn’t been able to see the others on camera regularly. Each morning, I would join just before nine, and we would each give the

outline of how we planned to spend our day and make any decisions for the allocation of

certain tasks. We’d then work to lunch, before leaving the call for the lunch hour, and re-join

after.

I did experience some difficulties with technology – when working online with constantly

streaming video, any WiFi lapses whatsoever felt quite annoying. However, the online nature of

the internship did allow me a lot of flexibility, so I was able to move between home and Oxford

periodically depending on where was more

convenient at the time. The main difficulty I had with

remote working was that the lack of a commute

meant it was easy for me to spend all day in the

house. If I were to be working longer, I think it would

have been beneficial to me to set up a strict

schedule which forced me to get outside every day.