British Antarctic Survey welcomes students who wish to gain both hands-on and virtual experience in a scientific research environment while studying.
We run a number of schemes for students at various stages of their education:
Our 6-day programme, open to UK-based students only, offers an opportunity to learn about the variety of roles contributing to the delivery of world-class scientific research as well as logistic and operational support in the polar regions.
The aim of the programme is to:
This experience is an opportunity for students to learn more about themselves and explore what they enjoy doing.
The programme is run in collaboration with the team at Creative Tuition, a not for profit organisation providing free tuition, extracurricular workshops and personal development support to pupils from low-income backgrounds, marginalised and underrepresented communities. The aim of this experience is for students not only to learn about polar research, but to learn more about themselves and the careers they want to have throughout their lives.
Many young people struggle to access traditional in-person work experience, especially those from harder to reach areas or from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Through our Virtual Work Experience programme we remove the twin barriers of cost and geographical location for young people from schools and colleges across the UK and abroad. This enables more young people to engage with us and learn about environmental science, marine engineering, polar operations and logistics.
It also allows us to increase the number of placements they can run to accommodate a more diverse range of young people from everywhere in the world.
Although this is our main work experience scheme for under 18s, we hope that we can still offer some on-site placements outside of this virtual work experience programme. This will depend on the availability of personnel during the summer season. Those requests should be sent separately to workexperience@bas.ac.uk.
Work experience students explain what they enjoyed the most about being part of the work experience programme at BAS. © Creative Tuition.
British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and British Geological Survey (BGS) are inviting students aged 14 to 19 years, to apply for a unique Virtual Work Experience Programme. This work experience presents an opportunity for students to learn about different roles in the scientific research space during the October 2026 half-term.
Please revisit this page over summer 2026 for further announcements on our October 2026 work experience programme.
In 2021 BAS introduced an EDI internship programme to further promote and enhance opportunities within the Polar science community to under-represented groups, especially people from racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ community and people with a disability. This programme ran again in 2023 and was open to everyone but with a focus on widening participation by specifically encouraging those from under-represented groups to apply.
We are currently looking for funding options for further internships for financial year 2025-26. As one of our interns, you will find yourself immersed in an opportunity that will help you develop scientific knowledge as well as valued skills and key experiences which may include: data collection and analysis, project management, report writing and Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI).
All internships will be paid at pro rata rates from an annual starting salary of £20,129.
For further information and to stay updated on our latest news visit www.bas.ac.uk, follow us on Instagram or subscribe to our YouTube channel.
The NERC Research Experience Placements (REPs) scheme aims to encourage students to consider a career in environmental sciences through funding to support paid summer placements for undergraduate students. They also enable Doctoral Landscape Awards (DLAs) to address:
REPs for 2026 will be advertised through our DLA partners.
REPs are available during the summer vacation and students will be be paid at least the national living wage. For current opportunities, please visit the websites of our DLA partners – a list of which can be found here
DLAs currently recruiting students are eligible to host REPs.
Students are subject to eligibility criteria to be able to apply for NERC REPs and must be:
Please note this guidance should be read in conjunction with the UKRI Training Grant Terms and Conditions and guidance documents.