University of Southampton

Work Placements for Neurodiverse Students

Work placements play an important part in our support of students and our mission to ensure that students are job market ready. Placements offer an excellent opportunity to develop employability skills, build links with organisations and get a taste of the different career options open to you.

Through our partnership with the South East Physics Network (SEPnet), we help our students to find the right placement opportunity for them, within a wide range of South East-based organisations.

Building on our links with SEPnet and as part of the Planet Possibility consortium we aim to help the neurodiverse community take advantage of placements and the long benefits that come from them.

We will be supporting undergraduate neurodiverse students from Physics and Astronomy in locating and applying for six-week paid placements. We will be offering tailored mentoring opportunities and workshops and ensuring that the placement programmes cater for individual student needs (whether that is a requirement to work entirely remotely or other). 

We will also be working with host employers to ensure that they are briefed and prepared to host a student. We would be delighted to hear from anyone keen to engage with us on this project whether that is joining us as a mentor or a placement host, or as one of our speakers for our workshops, or to share with us a programme that you are involved in which has potential overlap.

A word from our Project Lead, Professor Malgosia Kaczmarek: “The challenges that the neurodiverse community in Physics face are not in any way negligible. Engaging in placement activities with industry, in a fast-paced commercial setting, which whilst it helps to address many skills gaps is not often an activity that the community want to/ feel able to engage with. Working as part of a consortium through Planet Possibility to embrace challenges at many different levels and to share skills and expertise that each partner brings respectively to the table will go a long way in changing current mind-sets, facilitating access to opportunities, free of barriers and ensuring that inclusivity is very firmly placed on the Physics agenda.”