Student placements and fellowships

Student placements

Call for applications

Applications for The National Archives’ student placements are currently open, with six projects available within various departments at The National Archives.

All student placements at The National Archives enable students to:

1. Gain industry-specific knowledge and skills for working in a variety of roles across the research, government, cultural and heritage sectors.
2. Build professional connections across the organisation and an understanding of the variety of roles at The National Archives.
3. Create an output which showcases the work undertaken as part of their placement at The National Archives and which demonstrates the knowledge and skills the student has developed and applied during their time on the placement.

Placements are offered on a full- or part-time basis. Placements are between one and three months in length, but will all be a maximum of 20 working days (e.g. one month full-time or two-to-three months part-time).

Eligibility

Currently, our student placements are only open to master's and doctoral students with the right to work in the UK, and those who are fully funded and whose funding includes a specific allowance for placements.

Some of our student placements projects are open to both master’s and doctoral students, whilst others are open to only master’s students or only doctoral students. Please refer to the information provided for specific projects to check your eligibility.

How to apply

To apply for any of our student placement projects, please read about the projects below and complete our Expression of Interest (EoI) form by the deadline of your chosen project.

You may apply for a maximum of two projects, but please ensure you complete a separate EoI form for each.

Explore our student placements

Creating case studies using the UK Government Web Archive

Explore one of the world’s largest openly accessible web archives and create a case study or a themed collection celebrating an area of your choice.

Exploring stories of women in First World War medical case sheets

Work closely with record specialists and undertake research and uncovering women’s stories within our collection of First World War medical case sheets.

Student placements in Conservation and Heritage Science

Explore how conservation treatments and preventive strategies can support the long-term stability of archival and library collections.

Exploring the Prize Papers, a global early modern archive

Using language skills, examine previously unknown records from the Prize Papers collection and produce descriptions to support digitisation.

The ingenuity of cardboard

Develop research-led resources for informal learning with family audiences inspired by a unique object found in naval correspondence from 1804.

Parliament for the people: Private acts

Promote access to the newly transferred ‘Private Act’ of Parliament records relating to naturalisation, property, and divorces.

Fellowships

Our fellowships are designed to offer opportunities for collaborative research and professional development. When we have opportunities, we will post information on this page.