Close
Zara Hamzah Sendut studied Philosophy, Politics & Economics and graduated from UCL in 2022.
In 2022 while studying at UCL, Zara spoke to us about her experience completing a SODA internship at The Economist.
“My whole internship was fantastic. I was excited when I was invited to draft a piece about fuel poverty then be interviewed by The Economist’s Head of Data Journalism and Data Editor for a position. Getting to spend time working with the data team on pieces of data-driven journalism was an enriching experience.
“During my full-time placement I was able to work across three main areas and had a number of articles published. The first saw me pitching and producing data-led articles for their Graphic Detail section. I wrote three in total, covering topics on: wildfires across the European Union; how the war in Ukraine has affected worldwide economic growth particularly in the G20 countries; and the Economist Intelligence Unit’s livability index of the most livable cities in North America.
“The second was coding in R to analyse data and uncover trends or a story. I gathered data to investigate if political assassinations had changed the course of history and spent a lot of time processing data from the European Space Agency on heat stress. The data set spanned a 42-year period of those suffering from severe heat stress in every country globally and involved hundreds of csv files so it was initially challenging. I plotted the data by continent and country income group to identity patterns of high temperatures. The third area was around data visualisation and I was able to practice ways of presenting data using visual tools and design, a skill I really enjoy.
“It was amazing how applicable my academic studies were to the work and it was great to experience larger volumes of data for analysis. The team were so knowledgeable and happy to share their advice and practical expertise with me. It was such a valuable experience and has increased my interest in big data and how we can understand complex data to benefit society."