Summer Research Fellowship

Once a year, we run a two-month Summer Research Fellowship typically held at our office in London. It usually takes place somewhere between the months of June and September. Fellows have the opportunity to work on challenging research questions relevant to reducing suffering in the long-term future whilst being supervised by a researcher at CLR. Sometimes supervisors may be external experts in their field. The main purpose of the fellowship is to support fellows in their career development. Fellows can learn more about s-risks, test their fit for research roles, and improve relevant skills. While not the main goal, research contributions may also influence our strategic direction, grantmaking, community building, and other activities. Participants become part of our team of intellectually curious, hard-working, and caring people, all of whom share a profound drive to make the biggest impact they can. In the past, some participants have continued their work as full-time members of our team or grantees of the CLR Fund. Over the last four years, most researchers we have hired had previously participated in the Summer Research Fellowship. Target audience In the past, fellows have often fit into one of the following categories: People very early in their careers, e.g. in their undergraduate degree or even in high school, who have a strong interest in s-risks and would like to learn more about research and test their longer-term fit for it. People seriously considering changing their career to research on s-risks, who want to test their fit or want to work at CLR. People with a strong focus on s-risk who aim for a research or research-adjacent career outside of CLR and who would like to gain a better understanding of s-risk macrostrategy beforehand. People with research experience, e.g. from a partly- or fully completed PhD, whose research interests significantly overlap with those of CLR and who want to work on their research project in collaboration with CLR researchers for a few months. This includes people who do not strongly prioritize s-risk themselves. There might be many other good reasons for participating in the fellowship. In general, we encourage you to apply if you think you would benefit from the program, even if your reasons are not listed above. We work out with all incoming fellows how to make the fellowship as valuable as possible, given their individual strengths and needs. Often, this means focusing on learning and experimenting, rather than producing polished research output. In some cases, past fellows only started to work on what ended up as their main project more than a month into the fellowship. Further information The summer fellowship usually begins in June or July. We prefer participants to work from our London office if possible. The fellows usually receive a salary of £4,925 per month if located in London, as well as other additional benefits such as professional development and health and wellbeing budgets. For exceptional candidates, we are flexible with program length, compensation, and location. In general, we encourage people to apply even if any specific details do not initially appear to work for them. In most cases, we expect to be able to sponsor temporary visas for successful international applicants who would like to come to the UK for the Fellowship.