Deadline: Open Until Filled
Crossroads Eurasia is launching a FREE summer project for students and recent graduates.
We are looking for individuals who are interested in exploring an aspect of daily life in a Russian city alongside a Russian student from the local university. It will take place (virtually) in Voronezh, a medium-sized city south of Moscow with a young and cosmopolitan feel. The project is part-time, and can augment other summer work and study.
What the project will entail
The project will take place in July and last four weeks, requiring a commitment of 12 to 17 hours per week.
Participants will work in small groups with students from the Voronezh State University. They will research a theme that is linked to the interests of the group members and is both social and local — think something out of the lifestyle or culture sections of a newspaper (e.g. craft beer, local businesses, life under quarantine, etc). The beginning of the project will be devoted to defining the theme and creating a research plan around it.
Together the teams will build a journal of observations on how that theme is reflected in the life of the city. The local and foreign participants will work together on different aspects of the project. Where information gathering is involved, the local students will be the eyes and ears of the foreign participants — arranging interviews and translating as necessary. The objective is to produce an essay or article in English about their findings.
The project will be run by the Editor-in-Chief of a local online newspaper — Downtown.ru. The Editor will help each group refine their research theme, define an approach to gathering information, assist with access to sources, and help turn observations into a narrative. Participants’ work will be published on a website dedicated to the project.
We have 10 spots available and will accept applicants who meet the following criteria:
- Current students or recent graduates
- At least 4 semesters of Russian or equivalent (we may ask students to confirm via an online test) or heritage speaker
- Native English speaker or have native-level fluency
- Quality of their introductory letter
There is no cost to take part.
Questions
Please email vgorshkov@crossroadseurasia.com.
To apply:
Write an introductory letter with the following information:
- Your full name, university, major and minor (if applicable), year of graduation, and semesters of Russian completed.
- A paragraph or two about yourself, what made you interested in studying about Russia or the Russian language, and what you find most rewarding and most challenging about it.
- A paragraph or two that would give us a sense of a topic or topics of interests that you may want to explore through this project. You may approach this as creatively as you like; think big, think small, and anything in between. Our objective is to learn something about you.
Send to: vgorshkov@crossroadseurasia.com.
We may follow up with an interview.