Internships in Lithuania

Geopolitics and Security Studies Center, GSSC (hosted by FSI)

This opportunity is sponsored and organized by the  Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) through their Global Policy Internships program.

City: Vilnius, Lithuania

Internship Dates: Summer 2026

About the Organization: 

The majority of GSSC activities are focused on analyzing social, political and economic processes in the Eastern neighborhood countries, especially Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. However, in the past several years, the Centre became main non-governmental actor contributing to foreign policy, security and defense policy debates in Lithuania, becoming a platform for inter-institutional dialogue as well as significantly increasing its footprint internationally. In 2023 GSSC hosted the NATO Public Forum, an official side event at the NATO Vilnius Summit in 2023; GSSC is the only non-governmental organization from the region, hosting official side event at the Munch Security Conference in 2023 and 2024. GSSC also organizes events in other European capitals, hosts high level guests at the Centre, including foreign ministers, experts and Ambassadors. There are two shareholders of GSSC – the Government of Lithuania (executed by the Ministry of National Defence of the Republic of Lithuania) and the Vilnius University.

Project:

The GSSC offers a flexible research framework for interns, enabling them to shape their projects around the topics they are most passionate about. Interns can tailor their research focus in consultation with our team and will receive guidance throughout the process. We are especially interested in projects examining developments in Eurasia (Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, and Russia), the evolving transatlantic relationship between the EU and the United States, and the strategic dynamics surrounding China and Taiwan. This flexibility allows interns to contribute meaningfully to our work while gaining experience in the areas most relevant to their academic and professional goals.

Overall, all the program activities at GSSC are organized around 3 key topic areas: There are 3 focus areas along which the key program activities are organized around: (1) Transatlantic relations and security; (2) Eurasia; (3) Resilience. We expect that the interests of the student will fall along one of those topics with prior knowledge as well as intention to work on one of them in the future to provide a sustainable and mutually beneficial partnership.

Possible areas of work would include:

  • Analysis of the ongoing political processes (preparing the policy papers and briefs);
  • Contribution to GSSC events organization (expert discussions, seminars, conferences), including preparing short event reports and summaries;
  • Communication-related projects, such as drafting short social media posts and assisting in preparing WordPress posts about GSSC events and activities, may also be added.
  • GSSC offers other benefits to the student, such as access to policymakers and stakeholders, with the possibility to organize visits to and conducting interviews with the representatives of specific Ministries (like MoFA and MoD) and other institutions for student to get acquainted with the national context and politics. Hence a student with the interest in the Baltics may benefit from the internship the most.

Specific tasks include:

  • Conducting the analysis of publicly available data and research materials (along the likes of one of the 3 focus topics).
  • Writing policy papers (3-4 pages long).
  • Keeping track of relevant news, think-tank reports and official documents, and turning this into short overviews that are useful for GSSC colleagues.
  • Taking notes and writing short summaries of events held in English (discussions, lectures, briefings).
  • Supporting assistance in the events at the Center – helping with logistics, participant lists, basic attendance statistics.
  • Drafting short social media posts (for example on LinkedIn, Facebook or X) about what happened at GSSC during a specific event.
  • Preparing and uploading short post-event texts on WordPress (title, short description) and in this way learning the basics of website communication.

Eligibility and Skills Required:

The internship is open to continuing graduate students. Students from any department are welcome to apply. Applicants must be in good academic standing with a GPA of 3.3 or higher.

  • Additional required skills and characteristics include:
  • Is a master’s or PhD degree student.
  • Has solid analytical and critical thinking skills and is studying international relations, political science, European/area studies or a related field.
  • Has very good written and spoken English and can write clear, well-structured short texts (briefs, summaries, short articles).
  • Has a genuine interest in foreign and security policy, especially related to Central and Eastern Europe, the EU, NATO, and/or China and the Indo-Pacific.
  • Is careful and reliable in working with information - able to collect, select and organize material from different sources and meet agreed deadlines.
  • Is communicative and proactive, feels comfortable interacting with people from different countries, and is open to learning basic social media and WordPress communication.

Apply on SOLO

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