Past Interns and Assistants: Isabelle Gius

In honour of GENDER.ED’s five year anniversary, we recently sat down with past undergraduate interns and PhD assistants to discuss their experiences at GENDER.ED, what gender and sexuality studies related work they are currently involved in, as well as to allow them the opportunity to give valuable advice to future interns and assistants. 

Today, we sit down with Isabelle, a former Undergraduate Intern for GENDER.ED. This is what she had to say!

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When did you work for GENDER.ED and what did you do there?

My official title was the Communications and Events intern, but it ended up being mostly Communications rather than events. I worked with GENDER.ED the summer of 2020, so it was an interesting time due to Covid – it was meant to be in-person, but then obviously it was never in person.

I had this 50-50 between GENDER.ED and the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) – I did half of my work with them and then the other half with GENDER.ED. It was mostly working on the new website, and I see the website is still up, which is fun! I remember doing a lot of work on that with the SSPS Communications team. I also did a lot of social media promotion, like working on strategies to promote the ‘Understanding Gender in the Contemporary World: Key Concepts, Controversies and Challenges’, which is a first-year course. I did other things as well, like writing and advertising blog posts, interviewing members of staff studying and researching on gender and sexuality.

What feminist work or research are you involved in now? Tell us about what you’re up to!

I am a master’s student at LSE right now, doing gender development in globalization, where I’m mostly researching on the intersections of sexuality, health and globalization, and I’m writing my dissertation on constructions of bisexuality on HIV development policy, as well as some work on the war on drugs, specifically around gender and international development. Those are the two main things I’m working on, and I think that the internship was really valuable for me in realising what I wanted to do for my further studies.

How do you think your time at GENDER.ED shaped your current work? What did learn that you were able to draw on later?

In terms of shaping my current work, I don’t think I would be doing a gender studies masters if I hadn’t done that internship – just because Edinburgh doesn’t have a gender studies department or anything similar to that, so that was really the first time I interacted with lots of different people doing work in gender studies. I think that was the first time that I kind of realised how big of a field it was, and the types of diverse topics that were covered – I took a gender studies course my first year, as well as my second year, but didn’t realise how big of a discipline it was and that it was possible for me to continue to work and study in it.

In terms of skill, it was valuable to understand what happens behind the scenes at the university, and I feel that I gained a lot of professional experience and confidence. This internship was sort of the first professional work experience I had, and it’s served me well. And, also, the skills I learnt in general have also served me well – organizational skills, balancing multiple different projects at once, and the social media skills as well. Before my Masters, I worked in journalism a little bit, doing a lot of social media fact checking, and I think my experience in GENDER.ED was important in me getting that job.

What would you say to someone considering applying to work with GENDER.ED?

Do it! I really would encourage people to work with GENDER.ED. I think it’s a great space, and I was really impressed by how friendly and warm and supportive everyone was. Even though I was an intern, and it was only a for a couple of months, they did a really good job of making me feel like I was part of the community and exposed me to a community in the university I hadn’t really interacted with before. I really would encourage people to try and take part with GENDER.ED!