Monitoring & Early Warning System for Emerging Novel Animal Farming (Internship)

Eurogroup for Animals is the pan-European animal protection organisation which unites the voices of leading national and international organisations. We work to improve the welfare of as many animals as possible by leading and delivering coordinated advocacy and campaigns at European level. Eurogroup for Animals uses its knowledge and expertise to challenge EU decision makers and bring about positive change. By uniting our members and working together we magnify national activities to get our message across at European level.

The values that we at Eurogroup for Animals adhere to are:

Collaboration
Entrepreneurship
Impact
A focus on member organisations

Purpose of the role

We are seeking an intern to help develop an innovative monitoring and early warning system that identifies and tracks plans for new intensive farming operations involving novel species, including octopus, insects, and aquatic invertebrates, as well as the development and expansion of intensive farming systems, such as the expansion of recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS), across the European Union.

The project aims to support animal welfare advocacy by providing early warnings when commercial farming developments are proposed, discussed, and/or approved by public authorities. By improving our ability to detect emerging farming projects at an early stage, the tool will help inform the movement and develop intervention strategies to prevent these harmful farming systems from becoming established in the EU.

This internship offers a unique opportunity to combine data science, public-interest technology, and animal welfare in a project with tangible real-world impact.

Primary responsibilities

Map and assess potential information sources that could signal the development of new intensive farming projects.
Design and prototype an early warning and monitoring system, building on lessons learned from EfA’s previous prototype.
Evaluate different technical approaches, including web scraping, natural language processing, keyword-based monitoring, and AI-assisted document classification.
Work with consultants to design, develop and launch the back-end monitoring system underpinning the early warning system.
Develop methods to assess the relevance and reliability of detected signals.
Identify the information needs of EfA members and the wider animal protection movement, and design an alert-sharing model that defines what information should be shared, with whom, through which channels and at what stage of verification.
Develop and test workflows for validating, prioritising and disseminating alerts, including a proposed alert format, confidence/relevance criteria, roles and responsibilities, and recommendations for implementation.
Document the system architecture, methodology, and recommendations for future development.

Person specification

Essential Skills and Qualifications

Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
Experience with Python or another programming language commonly used for data collection and analysis.
Familiarity with web scraping, APIs, data extraction, or automated monitoring tools.
Ability to work independently, manage a research project, and communicate findings clearly.

Desirable Skills What the student will gain

Project management experience.
Experience with natural language processing or machine learning.
Experience working with multilingual datasets.
Familiarity with cloud-based data infrastructure or workflow automation tools.
Interest in animal welfare, sustainability, food systems, or environmental policy.

What the student will gain

Hands-on experience developing a high-impact monitoring and intelligence tool.
Exposure to policy, advocacy, and animal welfare work at the European level.
Opportunity to lead an exploratory project with significant scope for innovation.
Possibility of contributing to future implementation of the system.
A substantial applied research project suitable for a thesis or dissertation.

How to apply?

Please send your CV and a one page pitch of your approach to [email protected]