About Habitus

Habitus Collective is a Calgary-based social impact firm. Since 2015 we’ve worked to liberate research from the shelf and turn it into action — partnering with communities, nonprofits, and governments on more than 160 projects across Alberta, Canada, and the UK.

Our work spans research, program evaluation, strategic planning, data auditing, anti-racism strategy, community engagement, and facilitation. Our projects touch health, gender, equity, immigration and settlement, poverty, and systems change. We are a small, interdisciplinary, mostly-virtual team, and we take our principles seriously: equity, diversity and inclusion; collaboration and participation; partnership; ethics and integrity; and staying grounded in the experiences of the communities we work with.

Why we host practicum students

This is an opportunity for students to have a transformative field education experience. We are passionate about sharing what we have learned with the next generation of practitioners and learning from students from all their experiences. Our placements connect current and budding professionals together and push us to reflect on and improve our own practice.

What they are not is a source of free labour. If you come to Habitus, you will be brought into live projects with real clients and real deadlines, with the supervision and support to do that work well.

About the role

Over four months you’ll be immersed in one to two Habitus projects at a time, with exposure to a broader range across your placement. You’ll see how a project moves through its full life cycle: proposal writing, client onboarding, data collection, analysis and synthesis, recommendations and deliverable design, final reporting, and knowledge mobilization.

Work you can expect to be part of:

• Literature reviews, grey literature searches, jurisdictional scans, and reference mining

• Note-taking and support during interviews, focus groups, and workshops

• Qualitative analysis : working with data, identifying themes

• Tool development: interview guides, observation guides, survey questions, note-taking templates

• Building deliverables: reports, presentations, infographics, pamphlets

• Client meetings, community-based fieldwork, and presentations (shadowing first)

• Team meetings, lunch-and-learns, and internal skill-building sessions

You’ll get real practice with the tools of the trade — G-Suite, Microsoft Office, Miro, Canva and with the data tools that structure our work.

What you’ll walk away with

We build the placement around a learning contract we co-develop with you in the first weeks. Broadly, students leave Habitus having developed:

• Practical research and evaluation skills — searching, tool development, data collection, analysis

• Professional communication across video calls, email, and in-person settings, with clients, colleagues, and community members

• Public speaking and presentation skills, built up in low-stakes settings 

• Applied ethics — working through real dilemmas around consent, confidentiality, autonomy, and power

• Planning and prioritization — managing competing deadlines across multiple projects

• Deeper knowledge in a substantive field — health, gender, equity, anti-racism, immigration, or another area we can match you to

• A read on the bigger picture — the social, political, economic, and equity contexts that shape why projects exist and where they go

Supervision and structure

You will not be left to figure it out alone.

• Weekly 30-minute 1:1 check-ins — what you’re working on, what you’re learning, where you need support

• Longer 1:1s every couple of weeks — reviewing your learning contract, identifying skills you want to build, connecting you to readings, training, and people on the team

• Feedback on the work itself, from your supervisor and from project leads, before anything goes to an external audience

• A structured onboarding, including a reading package, our culture guide, and orientation to how Habitus projects work

• Roughly 1.5 hours of supervision per week on average depending on school requirement 

Who we’re looking for

This placement is open to students in social work and related social science fields including sociology, anthropology, public health, political science, policy studies, community development, and international development at the undergraduate or graduate level, who require a field placement or practicum for academic credit.

⭐SPECIAL OPPORTUNITY⭐ For the fall semester, Habitus has a special project in mind for practicum placement.  This project is focused on knowledge mobilization with a post-secondary partner.  In addition to other Habitus work, this placement will be focused on providing critical support with developing research summaries for different audiences, helping with recordings (online and in-person), and distributing this information through an extensive network.  

You’ll likely thrive here if you:

• Are curious about how research and evaluation actually get used to change programs and policy

• Communicate clearly in writing and are willing to speak up, ask questions, and take initiative

• Can organize your own time across competing priorities in a mostly-remote setting

• Care about equity, ethics, and doing right by the communities behind the data

• Want to be challenged rather than kept busy

Assets, not requirements:

• Coursework or experience in research methods, evaluation, or program planning

• Familiarity with qualitative analysis, survey design, or data visualization

We strongly encourage applications from Indigenous, Black, and racialized students, 2SLGBTQ+ students, students with disabilities, newcomers, and students from communities historically underrepresented in research and consulting.

Note: this is an unpaid placement undertaken for academic credit through your institution. Habitus is a certified living wage employer for all paid staff roles.

How to apply

Send the following to info@habituscollective.ca with the subject line “Fall 2026 Practicum  [Your Name]”:

1. Your resume or CV

2. A short letter (one page max) telling us: what you’re studying and what your program requires of a placement, what you hope to get out of these four months, and one social issue or type of work you’d like to go deeper on

3. Your institution’s practicum requirements or field education contact, if you have them

Applications close September 30th , 2026 . We review on a rolling basis and will follow up to arrange a conversation less an interview than a chance for both of us to work out whether this is a good fit.

Questions before you apply? Reach us at info@habituscollective.ca.