Opportunities for students’ involvement in the ESPON activities

Responding to a growing interest among students to learn about the implementation of EU programmes, the ESPON EGTC offers several opportunities to students to assist in the implementation of the ESPON programme:

Support for young researchers

The ESPON Cooperation Programme is keen to increase the attention of the scientific community to the issue of territorial evidence in policymaking. The ESPON EGTC introduced in 2020 a new scheme with an aim to contract early-career European researchers to ensure a wider outreach of ESPON activities. This activity shall contribute to developing the use of ESPON territorial evidence in their scientific work, manifested in papers presented at scientific conferences and/or published in scientific journals or books.

 This scheme was opened for applicants enrolled as a student in a PhD or Postdoctoral research programme offered by a university or any other higher education institution located in the countries of the ESPON Programme. The call for application was published on the ESPON website

Following this open call, 26 young researchers from 14 countries received financial support to implement research activities relevant to the ESPON Programme.

The results of these activities will be published on the ESPON website.

Traineeship

ESPON EGTC offers traineeships for a period of 3 to 5 months to students from the ESPON programme countries. The trainee is allocated to a specific unit (Administration and Management or Evidence and Outreach) at the ESPON EGTC and will be involved in a large range of activities to develop skills helpful in the future professional career.

An allowance of 1.100 Euro per month is provided as an indemnity to support living expenses during the traineeship at the ESPON EGTC. Travel costs can also be reimbursedby the ESPON EGTC based on actual expenses for travelling from the usual place of residence to Luxembourg and back at the end of the training period.  

In the last 5 years, the ESPON EGTC welcomed 10 trainees from 6 countries.  

For the selection of vacant trainee positions, an EU open call is organised and the vacancy note is published on the ESPON website: https://www.espon.eu/participate/vacancies/current-vacancies

Student practice

ESPON EGTC offers an opportunity to host short-term student practices, which are a compulsory part of some educational curricula at universities and colleges in the ESPON programme countries.

The short-term student practices are offered in addition to the traineeships organised by the ESPON EGTC through the open calls for applications. In contrast to the latter, the short-term student practices follow the logic and timeline of the university and college courses and are organised ad-hoc based on the enquiry by interested students. Another precondition is that the ESPON EGTC has sufficient capacity to accommodate the practice at the specific time.

Further, no remuneration will be paid by the ESPON EGTC to the student on practice, while all subsistence and insurance costs will need to be covered by the university or the students themselves.

Spontaneous interest queries can be sent to [email protected]

Student visits

The ESPON EGTC welcomes visits from universities to present the work of ESPON and to exchange on spatial planning and territorial development research and policies.

Request for visits can be sent to [email protected]