International Crisis Group, Future of Conflict Program – New York, NY

Summer 2023 Fellows:

Ava Claire Kerkorian

Summer 2024 Fellows:

Summer 2025 Fellows:

Eleanor Greyson

Office Description

The International Crisis Group is an independent organisation working to prevent wars and shape policies that will build a more peaceful world. Crisis Group sounds the alarm to prevent deadly conflict. We build support for the good governance and inclusive politics that enable societies to flourish. We engage directly with a range of conflict actors to seek and share information, and to encourage intelligent action for peace. Our work is urgently needed as the world is confronted with both new and chronic existing conflicts, each of which has devastating humanitarian, social and economic costs. Efforts to resolve conflicts are complicated by the profound shift in geopolitics, as well as the increasing prominence of non-state actors ranging from religious militants to criminal gangs.

Description of the Work

The intern will be placed within the Climate, Environment and Conflict team, which is currently building climate security monitoring and early warning system, eEARTH, that blends data and field based insights to shape global political discoursed and shape regional and national decisions.

eEARTH is an early warning system from International Crisis Group that combines advanced data analytics with deep regional expertise to anticipate and prevent resource-related conflict. Developed through extensive work on climate-security risks in the Horn of Africa, our platform is designed to detect signs of instability, whether from scarcity or abundance, before they escalate.

The International Crisis Group’s eEARTH project is looking for a quantitative research intern to assist its analysts and fellows in their research activities. The internship is an excellent opportunity for someone to learn about conflict and earth observation analysis and advocacy work but also to gain valuable experience in a high-profile international NGO.

Responsibilities:

Prepares data for research, including the data construction, cleaning, and basic analytical tasks with minimal supervision;
Helps design, implement and evaluate research, and automates research insights, the latter to help building internal data capacities;
The candidate should be able to write their own summaries of research, perform literature reviews, and retrieve information from the web;
The candidate will work closely with eEARTH researchers and regional teams within the organization;
Previous experience working on climate security, infrastructure, or regional focus on the Horn of Africa and the Middle East is a plus.

Desired Skills

Background in economics, computer science, statistics, social sciences, geography, environmental and earth studies, natural sciences or any other discipline using econometrics and data management.
(Advanced) coding skills in R, Python, or similar;
Strong writing and research skills;
Geospatial data skills, preferably in R or Python, as well as ArcGIS/QGIS
Knowledge of how to work with high resolution data, and data manipulation, especially raster data analysis;
Data management skills, specifically of large data volumes ;
Data visualization experience is an advantage, but not a must;
Experience in scraping information from the web to build a dataset using automated tools is a plus;
Interest in pursuing (or gaining exposure to) research related to conflict and public policy