We offer each of our trainees a summer bursary of up to £1,000 every summer of their degree to spend on journalism work experience or a journalism project, giving them the unique opportunity to travel and explore the areas of journalism they are passionate about.
School of Journalism trainee Yumna Iqbal shared how she used her bursary completing work experience with an independent investigative journalism organisation.
I have always been interested in investigative journalism, creating long form content and doing deep dives into topics that matter.
I highly admire the work of many investigative journalists, who seek to expose injustice and highlight issues that may not be widely reported about.
This is why I chose to use my bursary to complete a work experience placement at Liberty Investigates over six weeks.
Liberty Investigates is the journalism branch of renowned human rights charity Liberty, a very small team of journalists looking into key issues in society, one of which is university attitudes towards student activism.
After doing my own investigation for my data journalism module at The School of Journalism, I learnt that News Associates alumni Aaron Walawalkar at Liberty Investigates was doing something similar which led to my interest in this placement.
I had a brilliant time at Liberty Investigates and really got to understand what it is like to work in investigative reporting in a newsroom.
Focusing on UK universities’ relationships with police, arms companies and how this influences student activism and their reaction to it, I spent a lot of time collecting data on incidents of repression in UK universities in relation to pro-Palestine activism, compiling the information into a spreadsheet of my own, as well as analysing data supplied by an external organisation.
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I helped obtain and analyse exclusive data on over 200 repression of protest incidents at UK universities and wrote up the key findings for the Campus Accountability Mapping Project website – a website created by Walawalkar to present universities in the UK and how they manage student protests.
I also managed a separate project of sending FOIs to all UK police forces on their use of a controversial private intelligence firm and carried out open-source social media research to compile details of protests targeting UK university careers fairs.
I also spent my Wednesdays at the New Statesman, a political magazine that has been round for more than 100 years.
During this placement, I initially was tasked with primarily editorial jobs, which I enjoyed as it is also a path I am interested in, including editing The Weekend Interview hosted by Oli Dugmore, proofreading freelance articles and I also got the chance to pitch and write my own articles.
During my penultimate shift, I began helping with an investigation into “British ICE” with their spotlight journalist Harry Clarke-Ezzidio.
This included researching statistics on ICE raids and arrests in the US, as well as having found a recent similar raid happen in Tooting so I contacted individuals for interview.
This topic is extremely important and interesting to me and I’m grateful that Harry has kept me on board helping him with it.
Overall, I learnt lots of new skills over my time in my summer placements, especially in regards to investigative journalism. And these placements gave me a great insight of what I would want my career to look like.
You can read more of our summer bursary blogs here.
Sign up to our free The School of Journalism taster sessions here.