OxWell Virtual Internship Programme

We’ve designed these internships for students to develop research skills, understand how research can improve the lives of young people, and experience first-hand the power of the data they provide as part of the OxWell Student Survey.

We’ve planned a varied schedule of sessions for students to take part in. As part of the internship, students will:

• learn about the process of doing research (e.g. how to craft a research question, how to analyse and interpret data, how to make a scientific poster presentation)
• design a micro research project based on their own interests
• use national (anonymous) data from the OxWell Data Platform (OxHub) to answer their research question
• create a poster of their project and present it in a supportive environment
• receive small group and Oxford style small group tutorials from members of the OxWell Study team
• learn about the latest research in adolescent health and wellbeing
• have opportunities to hear about some of the different career paths in research, health, and psychology
• meet members of the OxWell Study team in small, informal settings to learn about their work and their career path and to ask any questions
• have opportunities to help shape the 2027 OxWell survey by inputting on topic areas and questions

We are inviting two students from each school or college that participated in OxWell 2025 to join us for these internships. All sixth form and further education students are eligible to participate (participants must be 16 or older).

N.B. The OxWell 2025 participation requirement is at the school-level, so students from participating schools can apply even if they did not personally take part in the study.

29th June Update: We are now excited to be able to open this opportunity more widely. If your school has shared this opportunity with you, you are warmly welcome to apply.

We hope the internships will be relevant and valuable to students with all types of backgrounds and interests. However, they may be especially beneficial for those interested in medicine, psychology, education, or social sciences (e.g. geography, politics, economics).

As the internships will involve analysing OxWell data and interpreting findings, it is helpful (but not essential) for students to be comfortable with quantitative thinking.

You can find the application form here. The form asks for students’ name, school/college, and contact details as well as two short answer (max 100 words) questions about their interests in the topic area and why they want to do an internship. The deadline is 26th June 2026.

29th June Update: We are now accepting applications on a first come first serve basis to students in invited schools (final deadline 13th July).

We will randomly select two applicants from the pool of students who have completed all sections of the application form within each school or college. To do this, we will assign each applicant with a unique ID and group IDs by school/college. We will then use a random number generator to select two IDs, so it is completely up to chance.

We’ve chosen this approach because we want all students to have a chance of being selected. We believe that each student will have something unique to contribute as well as a lot to learn.

We aim to share the outcomes on 1 July 2026.

29th June Update: We are now accepting applications on a first come first serve basis to students in invited schools (Up to two per school).

The internships will run from 20-24 July 2026 (inclusive). Each day will start at 10am and finish at 5pm with a 1-hour lunch break. We’ll use the University of Oxford Teams account to host all sessions and materials.

Given the interactive nature of the internships, it is essential that students have access to a computer and that they keep their cameras on during the sessions. If either of these is a barrier for your participation, please let us know via email.

The OxWell survey asks about a range of topics that some students may find upsetting such as mental health difficulties, self-harm, and violence. Students will have full control over which topics they explore within their own micro-project, but may encounter these potentially sensitive topics during their explorations of the data dashboard or through hearing about other students’ projects. Students will always have the opportunity to step away from any of the session if they find the content upsetting and a member of the OxWell team will be on hand to speak with anyone who might want to talk.

Please send any questions to Emma and Shreena in the OxWell team by emailing oxwell@psych.ox.ac.uk

Yes, all students who attend at least 80% of the sessions and present their poster will receive a certificate of attendance.

We would love to be able to offer in-person internships, but have opted for virtual ones for several reasons.

First, we wanted to be able to offer this opportunity to as many students as possible. If we were to do in-person internships, we would only be able to accept 2 students; with virtual internships, we can accept as many as 100.

Second, we wanted these internships to be both accessible and equitable, and we believe the virtual format is more aligned with this goal as some students face additional barriers to in-person participation.

Finally, the OxWell team itself is geographically dispersed, so hosting these internships online means that student participants can benefit from the full range of experience and expertise of our team members across the country.