Lovely Sefasts, 

Within Sefa’s Global pillar, the Research Project (RP) and International Development Project (IDP) give students the chance to take what they’ve learned in the classroom and put it to work on real challenges abroad. Both are run entirely by students and built around research, giving a select group of bachelor’s and master’s students the opportunity to work with external organisations while picking up skills in research, consultancy, project management and cross-cultural collaboration along the way.

The Research Project team spends the year working on consulting projects for a range of organisations. This year that meant working with Eindhoven Airport, Vitens and Gemeente Amstelveen on things like why homeowners hesitate to make their homes more sustainable, how different stakeholders can work together on water quality and how airport baggage processes can be sped up. Along the way, students get a real taste of the consulting world from landing clients to doing the research, shaping recommendations and presenting to senior executives. The year wrapped up with a trip abroad, and in 2026 that meant four weeks through Argentina and Chile, including a meeting with the Dutch Embassy in Buenos Aires.

As RP treasurer Marek Kosiar put it, the trip gave the team “invaluable exposure to the full consulting process”, but it was also about more than the professional side. It’s what turned the group into, in his words, “a close-knit team, ultimately, a new family.”

This summer, the International Development Project team was busy too, partnering with a non-profit and social enterprise to tackle a socio-economic and environmental challenge in a developing country, combining desk research, fundraising and field research. In 2026, that took them all the way to the Arfak Mountains in West Papua, where they worked directly with local farmers and communities.
Chairwoman Zuzanna Kitlinska summed it up well: the project makes clear that development work is “never as straightforward as it may appear from a distance,” and takes “curiosity and humility” to really understand local culture, politics, economics and gender roles. She called IDP “demanding and unpredictable, but… beyond rewarding”, the kind of experience that leaves you with new skills, a broader perspective and friendships that last.

The 2026 IDP wouldn’t have happened without support from the Amsterdams Universiteitsfonds (AUF), which helped fund the team’s field research in West Papua.
Together, these two projects show what student-led initiatives can do to round out an academic education, pushing students to deal with uncertainty, work with people outside the university and gain hands-on international experience they’ll carry with them long after graduation.