A micro-internship at TORCH
TORCH is fortunate to have the support and insights of several micro-interns in week 9 of each term. The interns play an important role in directly supporting our work and bringing new ideas and perceptions to what we do and how we communicate with our audiences.
This is what one of our great interns said after his week at TORCH in 2025.
"During my micro internship at TORCH I’ve learnt a lot about the range of humanities research and events taking place in Oxford. TORCH has a wide reach, ranging from small book clubs to international outreach events, festivals and more.
What hits you rights away is the vast amount of content TORCH has on their website, with around 11,000 pages, it is more than 3 times larger than the second biggest website at Oxford.
The week began with an introduction to TORCH from Sarah, the operations manager, and the kind of activities we could do during the micro internship. The first tasks were to do with website management. We used a website checking platform called Silktide to check for spelling errors and broken links and then used Mosaic to make corrections to help improve website accessibility.
As there wasn’t a whole lot of correction to make with spelling error, I quickly transitioned to working on subtitling videos on TORCH’s YouTube channel. I worked on Book At Lunchtime videos including: Courting India; England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire by Nandini Das; English Food: A People's History by Diane Purkiss; and then worked on subtitling some medical humanities short videos and a keynote lectures on Food Studies with Heather J. Sharkey as the guest speaker.
Subtitling these videos allowed me to learn about a range of humanities subjects and was a refreshing change to my usual materials science degree. As Sarah described it, I had to do a lot of “detective work” to decipher some of the names and subject terminology, which involved researching the topics online and doing some clever guess work. My vocabulary certainly expanded during this internship, especially with loanwords like “haute cuisine” and “beurre noirs”. It was very insightful and enjoyable hearing from the authors themselves, as well as thoughts from the other panellist in the Book At Lunchtime videos. It was interesting learning about political dynamics in between Britain and India during the 17th century; about how bread used to be made in the UK and societal impact of food; and about Van Gogh’s obsession with potatoes. I came to appreciate the role of humanities research on decisions in medicine, such as the ethics and societal impacts, and more generally how anthropological studies reveal much about the human experience in everyday subjects such as food. The way people talk in humanities and approach evidence was very interesting to me, coming from a STEM background. It showed to me that the different disciplines shared more similarities than I initially thought.
Throughout the week, we also got to listen in on meetings with the team, and had introduction to the Cultural Programme, Comms and international work with Justine, John and Arunima. All were good insights in the role of TORCH in the wider community, and it’s importance in highlighting humanities research, even elevating stories to the level of national news.
I liked their Accidental Tudor Deaths Top Trumps card game, informed by the research of Professor Steven Gunn and Dr Tomasz Gromelski who also had roles in the making of Horrible Histories Stupid Deaths.
This micro internship is well-suited for anyone interested in humanities research, and as there are a range tasks to work on, you can find something you can enjoy in whilst doing work that is helpful for the company. As the internship is remote, and largely self-directed, you can work from the comfort of your home and can be flexible with breaks. John made it abundantly clear that our work was as micro interns was valued at TORCH and our insights on how the website could be improved were particularly helpful. Overall, it was an enjoyable five days and I gained an insight into the world of humanities research and outreach, and learned a lot about some interesting topics!"
Many thanks from all the TORCH Team for providing so much additional support for us.
