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Work-based Learning in Practice: Ethical and Security Concerns (O5)

The fifth intellectual output captures specific challenges for WBL in PCS namely ethical considerations and security risks. The output aims to address these challenges and to provide instructions for students and program managers for dealing with these challenges.

During their WBL experience, particularly students of Peace, Conflict and Security Studies (PCS) regularly encounter security or ethical challenges, because many internships, but also voluntary work, often take place in conflict prone environments both internationally and nationally. Oftentimes there is little time to directly deal with concerns about security and ethical considerations during a work based placement, though their importance should not be underestimated. To prepare the students, but also the internship institutions and the academic staff, INCOPS develops advice for institutions, illustrating what kind of best practices support the integration of ethical and security concerns in the course of WBL.

It is the aim to not only focus on the physical security of the respective student that carries out an element of WBL, but also the affected community (mostly in conflict prone regions or insecure spaces) by referring to the debates on how to conduct sensitive research in the Global South. These ethical and security considerations concern both institutional duties and tasks, but also the student’s responsibilities.