The Social Science Summer Writing Internship Program (SWIP) is a collaboration between the Center for Innovation in Social Science (CISS) and the Writing in the Disciplines program. SWIP provides summer writing internships to undergraduate students studying social sciences by placing interns at a social science research institute on the BU campus for a nine-week period in the summer. Interns work about 15 hours per week and attend a 90-minute weekly writing workshop/seminar led by Writing Program Senior Lecturer Dr. Stephen Hodin. Interns also attend an orientation during the first week of the program, and a concluding program during the final week, at which time they share their experiences with their cohort mates, site supervisors, and other invited guests. Guest speakers, who work in a field related to social-science writing, are invited to the concluding program. The seminar is held in the CISS conference room (704 Commonwealth Ave). Seminar dates for 2025 TBD.

Each intern will receive a stipend of $2,500. The program does not provide housing.

Interns work closely with their site supervisor, and carry out tasks including:

  • Writing news, feature, and personality profile articles, that describe the research, teaching or outreach activities carried out at their site. The student interns develop story ideas through their own research and through consultation with their site supervisor.
  • Interviewing faculty and students affiliated with their site, and producing short videos and/or podcasts (to be hosted on the site’s website) that showcase the research, teaching or service activities of the featured personnel.
  • Assist with the institute’s website updates, including writing brief news items, summaries of recent research publications, brief statements publicizing events and achievements, and more.
  • In consultation with their center supervisor and workshop leader Stephen Holdin, the interns design and compose a summer writing project based on their own social science research interests.

Interns will bring to the internship a summer writing project that will be revised and remediated for a new audience. These projects may lead to developing a UROP proposal based on existing research, initiating an Honors thesis, or transforming existing research or course work into a scholarly journal article to be submitted to one of the BU student-run academic journals, such as Arché.

Our partners on the BU campus included in 2024:

Center for Innovation in Social Science
Center on Forced Displacement
Center for Mind & Culture

For highlights and the SWIP ’24 Showcase see the work of our interns:

Nathaniel Clizbe, CAS ’25
Rayea Jain, COM ’26
Anne Joseph, CAS ’25
Devin Rauscher, CAS ’26
Mika Yao, CAS ’25

Funding for the Social Science Summer Writing Internship Program comes from Jennifer Simpson’s generous gift through the Psalm #103 Foundation.

Deadline for Applications for Summer 2025 is forthcoming. Interested students will be asked to include a resume and a brief (1 page) cover letter describing their interest in the position to Shannon Landis (ciss@bu.edu), CISS administrator, date TBD. 

For information about the Social Science Summer Writing Internship Program, please contact Associate Director for Writing in the Disciplines, Dr. David Shawn, at wid@bu.edu.