Background 

Durham has partnered with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to offer up to 12 students the opportunity to participate in a virtual internship and up to 4 students to spend 6 weeks on an in-person research internship this summer.

Bring to life objects and histories from the 1867 World Exposition in Paris! Working with selection of period photographs produced as stereoviews, and under the guidance of curators, archivists, and professors, you will identify and research artefacts in the Exposition and locate visitor narratives, among other objectives. Through contemporary accounts you will be immersed in the experience of attending and seeing an event that was one of the largest public spectacles of the nineteenth century, on a scale unimaginable today. Your research will make a real contribution to an ongoing exhibition project in Paris and Washington, and it will deepen histories about individual photographs. You will learn new skills especially through research with museum databases and online repositories, in organizing research, and in learning to interpret individual objects. Topics and themes that might be studied include art, music, mining and engineering, architecture, agriculture, medicine, military weapons, the history of photography, anti-slavery movements, and nationalism. To ensure success and contextualize this collaborative research project, interns will be guided by museum staff and project directors in a bi-weekly group meeting, ad hoc online meetings as necessary, and email exchanges.

This research project supports a larger, international research endeavour with various anticipated scholarly products. Students will be assigned various research tasks that might include identifying objects that were sent to the exposition, photographs - particularly stereo views of the exposition, narratives by visitors to the exposition, archives of exposition presenters, and other related materials. Students will be guided and directed to some known museums, libraries, and archives, and may also be expected to do some exploration. Findings will be placed into in a shared drive.

The 1867 World Exposition in Paris

The Exposition was the fourth ever world’s fair and the second one in Paris. One goal of the fair was to show off the new Paris, that had just undergone Haussmann’s famous renovation; It was the last time a world’s fair would be held in Paris under a monarchical regime (the Second Empire). The next Paris fair, in 1878, would be a celebration of republican France. In a way, the 1867 world’s fair was the celebration of a France that was soon no more.

Virtual Internship - Spring 2025

This virtual internship will take place in or near Durham University, UK led remotely by Shannon Perich, curator, National Museum of American History.  The theme of the internship will be centred around the Exposition Universelle of 1867, aka 1867 Paris Exposition. The internship cohort will meet online as a group once every two weeks for two hours, and perhaps more frequently as needed. The required biweekly meetings will be established ahead of time. These meetings will provide students with information, research guidance and assignments. It will also be a time for discussion and guest presentations. Students will be expected to conduct research independently, but in some cases may wish to work in small teams to support each other.  Perich will be available via email and online meetings between required meetings. The final meeting will be a presentation of their research and findings by interns.

Expected Student Commitment: Student commitments will be 5-7 hours/week. Students will keep a log of research endeavours that will be shared periodically and kept by Perich. Students will post research findings in formats designed by the outside research team.

In-person Internship - Summer 2025

Following successful completion of the virtual internship, funding is available to support four students to undertake a 6 week in-person internship at the institution in Washington DC. Students will undertake full-time research projects at the institution. The placements will take place summer 2025. Turing funding is available to support these placements.

• Three grants are available at the basic Turing rate. These include a contribution towards living costs of c.£1,176 for a 12 week stay (pro-rated for shorter visits). 
• One uplifted grant is available to a student who meets the University's Widening Participation criteria (see eligibility below). This includes a contribution towards living costs of c.£1,512 for a 12 week stat (pro-rated for shorter visits) and travel costs of up to £745 may be reclaimed. Should no Widening Participation students apply, a fourth basic rate grant will be available.

Learning Outcomes

1. Gain a sense of what an international collaboration looks like.
2. Engage in conversations about how the 1867 stereo views drives the research.
3. Learn how deep visual study can open new lines of inquiry.
4. Discover how to use historical documents and narrative to recover missing and hidden stories.
5. Practice moving between 19^th century value systems and contemporary ethics while working to acknowledge that achievement and harm coexist simultaneously and wrestle with how to present that complexity to the public.
6. Build professional research, writing, and cataloguing skills.

Eligibility

Virtual Internships: any 2nd year undergraduate student and above may apply for the virtual internship programme. This is to ensure that students have the requisite basic academic skills to undertake meaningful projects. There is no disciplinary bias to the programme, however, students must demonstrate an interest and link to the internship theme(s).

In-person Internships: both UG (2nd year and above) and PG students may apply, however, to be eligible students must have at least one year of their degree programme left in summer 2025 (e.g. current final year students and graduands are not eligible). The same guidance regarding second year students and disciplinary bias applies to the in-person internships

Students may apply for either the virtual internship alone or for both the virtual internship and the in-person internship.

Widening Participation