Motu Economic and Public Policy Research

Motu offers summer internships for students completing their degree and planning to return to graduate study. The key characteristics we are seeking are intelligence, motivation, and interest in the issues we study.

Summer internships

Applications for summer internships for 2009/10 have closed. Applications for summer 2010/11 internships are welcome from March 2010.

Motu’s internship programme is designed to apply and extend students’ empirical skills and assist their development as researchers. Its overriding aim is to build local research capacity, improving young researchers’ skills and improving the quality of New Zealand research. 

We aim to involve our interns in our work in ways that help them understand the public policy and research issues involved. Internships build students’ skills, as well as providing our researchers with useful research assistance.  Ultimately we hope our interns will be better equipped to consider a career in public policy analysis and research.

While we mostly do economic research, we are not necessarily seeking an economics student. Students should have a strong background in economics, mathematics, statistics, geography or a similar field. Internships typically last around twelve weeks over the summer months, though this is flexible. Interns work a paid 40 hour week at our Wellington office.

This summer we have four students joining Motu as interns. We are pleased to welcome Alex Olssen (Victoria University of Wellington), Ruth Pinkerton (Waikato University), Darian Woods (University of Canterbury) and Nicholas Tarrant (University of Otago), who to will work on various research projects alongside senior fellows and research analysts.

For info from previous interns and more information, see our Summer Intern information sheet (PDF 430 KB).

To apply for 20010/11 internships, please send your cover letter, CV and academic record to Rhylie Alexander.

Maori internship - apply now

In addition to our open-entry internships, funding is also available for students of Maori descent. Our research programmes include several issues of direct relevance to Maori. Interns are often involved in this work, but we are not expecting them to bring specific skills because of their Maori heritage. We are currently taking applications (for one internship starting early 2010 - dates flexible).

Download Maori internship information sheet (PDF 100KB).

To apply for this internship, please send your cover letter, CV and academic record to Rhylie Alexander.