This internship will research the forms of hospitality used within the UNESCO Trail in Scotland and enacted in practice, and through practice led research at UNESCO RIELA events, notably the eighth annual UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Education, Languages and the Arts (UNESCO RIELA) Spring School: The Arts of Integrating in Glasgow (May 2026). This is UNESCO RIELA’s main annual public engagement event and involves multiple stakeholders from across several sectors and disciplines. The Spring Schools are collaborative, communal events where presenters and participants come together over a few days to share ideas, music, food, and discussion in an open and inclusive environment. They intersect with Scotland’s UNESCO Trail and UNESCO designations and the project will involve some visits to and co-ordination with the research and artistic/language work at some of the sites, especially with the Scottish Crannog Centre in Perth: UNESCO City of Folk Art and Craft. The bulk of the work will be desk-based.
The research internship will undertake research with stakeholders in UNESCO designations in Scotland to understand their concept of hospitality with refugees and their educational remit and how it intersects with refugee-background groups. This will be undertaken using a desk-based approach with a full review of their publications and websites.
The intern will produce a report on the findings, including a taxonomy of the kinds of hospitality to knowledge, art, sites, music, languages etc which are found in the text based materials and (to a certain extend) in the field.
This report will then be used to inform the development of the 8th Annual Spring School and the enactment of hospitality in an academic conference setting such that the good practices can be further developed. It will form a key part in the design process of our public engagement and research initiatives, which act as a showcase of the work, not just in terms of content, but in the methodologies developed in the UNESCO Chair team as well.
The report will also be sent as a policy briefing to UNESCO UK and co-authored with the Chair holder and intern.
More information about the Spring School can be found at
https://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/unesco/events/springschool/
More information about the UNESCO Trail in Scotland can be found at https://www.visitscotland.com/things-to-do/unesco-trail
This internship will assist the UNESCO RIELA Secretariat and academic staff to:
- Develop a research-based understanding of how UNESCO designations are using hospitality for refugees in their literature and web-based work and events
- Present a report before the Spring School on this desk-based research
- Learn through practice-led research how hospitality is embodied in a UNESCO designated research event
- Liaise with the project manager to help implement the research findings from the UNESCO Trail analysis into the design of the next Spring School
- Supporting intersections between the Spring School and Scotland’s UNESCO designations and UNESCO Trail.
- Offer a final short report on the way hospitality works in practice at a UNESCO designated event which can be used as the basis of a co-authored UNESCO UK Policy brief.
After the event, the intern will contribute to the event evaluation, and research report. This report will be made available online and circulated to the UK Commission for UNESCO as part of our reporting obligations. The intern will be fully credited as co-author of the report.
