Placements at Kew

There are opportunities at Kew across a range of departments including, communications, public programmes, collections and science. Placements with Kew are a fantastic way to develop your skills, build your networks, and work with a renowned scientific and public-facing institution. 

How does it work?

Placements are usually 3 months and there are various options for onsite, hybrid and remote working. 

Occasionally, discrete, predefined projects are advertised that have a deadline for applications and are completed in a specified timeframe, which will be highlighted at the link below.

Most often, though, Kew advertises areas that are open to hosting PhD students. You will find suggestions of placements that you could do at any time of the year at the link below.

There is sometimes subsidised onsite accommodation at Wakehurst but not at Kew. 

What might I work on?

We encourage you to look for a placement that might be out of your comfort zone and different to what you usually do in your PhD research to get the most out of this experience. There is a range of possible opportunities across a range of departments at Kew with some offering things that you might not expect. Most opportunities are open to students from a variety of disciplines from science to arts and humanities. Placements have been created with the aim of giving experiences outside of academia, usually in a desk-based environment.

Discover here the selection of teams who are open to hosting PhD placement students. Click on the links to see more information about the placements that are currently available.

If you are interested in applying for any of these placements, please send your CV and a 500-word statement of interest to sciencetraining@kew.org with the name of the placement and the name of your lead contact or supervisor from your university or DTP. 

There is no application deadline for these placements; you can apply at any point.