Search for:

Start here
Career guide
Research
- Problem profiles Find out about the world's biggest and most neglected problems.
  See all →
  Top areas to work on
  Preventing an AI-related catastrophe
  Catastrophic pandemics
  Nuclear weapons
  Great power war
  Factory farming
  Global priorities research
  Building effective altruism
  Improving decision making
  Emerging challenges
  The moral status of digital minds
  Risks of stable totalitarianism
  S-risks
  Space governance
  Civilisation resilience
  Wild animal suffering
  Other pressing problems
  Global health
  Climate change
  See all problem profiles →
- Skills The most useful skills for making a difference.
  See all →
  Top skills to build early in your career
  Policy and politics
  Organisation-building
  Research
  Communicating ideas
  Software and tech
  Engineering
  Experience with an emerging power
  Expertise relevant to a top problem
  See all our skills pages →
- Career reviews Learn about high-impact career paths.
  See all →
  Our list of top high-impact career paths
  AI governance and policy
  AI safety technical research
  Biorisk research, strategy, and policy
  Information security in high-impact areas
  Expert in AI hardware
  China-related AI safety and governance
  Grantmaker
  Helping build the effective altruism community
  Nuclear weapons safety and security
  Operations in high-impact organisations
  Research into global priorities
  More promising paths
  Be a founder
  Software engineering
  Journalism
  See more →
  How to build great career capital
  See our top recommendations →
  See all career reviews →
- Advanced series Our most important research findings.
  Read the full series →
  Introduction
  Your most important decision
  Foundations
  A definition of impact
  Longtermism
  Harmful jobs
  Global priorities
  Problem selection
  Existential risks
  Top problems list
  Contribution
  How to think about your contribution
  Effective solutions
  List of high-impact careers
  Personal fit
  Gut instinct
  Differences in productivity
  Comparative advantage
  Strategy
  Ambition
  Coordination
  Exploration
  Impact and satisfaction
  Accidental harm
  Read the full series →
- Browse all our content Pick a topic to explore or check out our most popular pieces.
  Career planning and decision making
  How to make your career plan
  All our other planning resources
  Selected topics
  Moral philosophy
  Career capital
  Job satisfaction
  Anonymous advice
  Unconventional advice
  Advocacy
  Existential risk
  Top-recommended careers
  See all topics →
  Top articles from outside our guides
  Best charities to donate to
  Misconceptions about effective altruism
  High-impact research questions
  What are your chances of getting elected to Congress, if you try?
  How many lives does a doctor save?
  What's the impact of voting?
  Advice for undergraduates
  All articles →
See all →
Top areas to work on
Preventing an AI-related catastrophe
Catastrophic pandemics
Nuclear weapons
Great power war
Factory farming
Global priorities research
Building effective altruism
Improving decision making
Emerging challenges
The moral status of digital minds
Risks of stable totalitarianism
S-risks
Space governance
Civilisation resilience
Wild animal suffering
Other pressing problems
Global health
Climate change
See all problem profiles →
See all →
Top skills to build early in your career
Policy and politics
Organisation-building
Research
Communicating ideas
Software and tech
Engineering
Experience with an emerging power
Expertise relevant to a top problem
See all our skills pages →
See all →
Our list of top high-impact career paths
AI governance and policy
AI safety technical research
Biorisk research, strategy, and policy
Information security in high-impact areas
Expert in AI hardware
China-related AI safety and governance
Grantmaker
Helping build the effective altruism community
Nuclear weapons safety and security
Operations in high-impact organisations
Research into global priorities
More promising paths
Be a founder
Software engineering
Journalism
See more →
How to build great career capital
See our top recommendations →
See all career reviews →
Read the full series →
Introduction
Your most important decision
Foundations
A definition of impact
Longtermism
Harmful jobs
Global priorities
Problem selection
Existential risks
Top problems list
Contribution
How to think about your contribution
Effective solutions
List of high-impact careers
Personal fit
Gut instinct
Differences in productivity
Comparative advantage
Strategy
Ambition
Coordination
Exploration
Impact and satisfaction
Accidental harm
Read the full series →
Career planning and decision making
How to make your career plan
All our other planning resources
Selected topics
Moral philosophy
Career capital
Job satisfaction
Anonymous advice
Unconventional advice
Advocacy
Existential risk
Top-recommended careers
See all topics →
Top articles from outside our guides
Best charities to donate to
Misconceptions about effective altruism
High-impact research questions
What are your chances of getting elected to Congress, if you try?
How many lives does a doctor save?
What's the impact of voting?
Advice for undergraduates
All articles →
Job board
Podcasts
- The 80,000 Hours Podcast
- 80k After Hours
- The 80,000 Hours Career Guide
- Effective Altruism: An Introduction
- Effective Altruism: Ten Global Problems
- On Artificial Intelligence
Get 1-1 advice
Get 1-1 advice
Newsletter

New releases
All articles
Give feedback
About

Home Topics Careers Sometimes-recommended careers Academic Research

Search for:

New releases
All articles
Give feedback
About

Explore our archive by topic...

Foundations (323)
- Effective Altruism (127)
- Existential risk (93)
- Future generations & longtermism (80)
- Moral philosophy (74)
  - Moral patients (11)
  - Moral uncertainty (10)
- Reasoning well (124)
  - Decision making (42)
  - Epistemics (6)
  - Forecasting (8)
World problems (374)
- Most pressing problems (279)
  - Artificial Intelligence (86)
  - Building effective altruism (66)
  - Catastrophic pandemics (42)
  - Factory Farming (23)
  - Global priorities research (51)
  - Great power conflict (21)
  - Institutional decision making (47)
  - Nuclear war (28)
- Other pressing problems (148)
  - Artificial sentience (10)
  - Atomically precise manufacturing (3)
  - Charter cities (3)
  - Civilisational resilience (9)
  - Climate change (19)
    - Geoengineering (3)
  - Economic growth (12)
  - Ending Ageing (5)
  - False ideas on social media (10)
  - Global Health (28)
  - Global public goods (11)
  - Gun Control (3)
  - Harmful restrictions on migration (5)
  - Improving values (4)
  - Individual reasoning & cognition (21)
  - Mental health (problem area) (5)
  - Risks from malevolent actors (13)
  - Risks of stable totalitarianism (11)
  - S-risks (4)
  - Science policy & infrastructure (22)
  - Space governance (4)
  - Voting reform (7)
  - Whole brain emulation (5)
  - Wild animal suffering (10)
- Problem prioritisation (25)
Careers (526)
- Careers to build career capital (30)
  - Congressional staffer (4)
  - Early-stage startup employee (3)
  - Economics PhD (16)
  - Machine learning PhD (6)
- Categories of impactful careers (260)
  - Applying an unusual skill to a needed niche (5)
  - Communication (27)
  - Earning to Give (63)
    - EtG advice (6)
    - EtG pros and cons (15)
  - Government & policy (86)
    - Party Politics (12)
  - Organisation-building at effective nonprofits (41)
    - Foundation Program Management (10)
    - Fundraising (9)
    - Philanthropic Advising (11)
  - Research in relevant areas (87)
    - Biomedical Research (24)
    - Scientific research (21)
- Other careers (172)
  - Art & Entertainment (6)
  - Biomedical Research (16)
  - Computer Science PhD (15)
  - Consulting (10)
  - Data science (28)
  - Design (2)
  - Education (6)
  - Finance (19)
    - Asset Management (7)
      - Quantitative hedge funds (4)
    - Investment Banking (6)
  - Lawyer (9)
  - Marketing (3)
  - Medicine (28)
    - Doctor (13)
    - Medical Researcher (7)
  - Nursing (1)
  - Philosophy academia (10)
  - Politics (52)
    - Civil Service (10)
    - Party Politics (20)
  - Web designer (1)
- Sometimes-recommended careers (242)
  - Academic Research (107)
  - China-Western coordination (10)
  - Data collection for AI alignment (1)
  - Earning to give in quant trading (6)
  - Effective climate change interventions (10)
  - Engineering (9)
  - Expert in AI hardware (8)
  - Found a tech startup (30)
  - High impact executive assistant (3)
  - Historian of large societal trends (7)
  - Information security (12)
  - Investigate new problems (5)
  - Journalism (26)
    - Journalist (11)
  - Longtermist philanthropy (2)
  - Non-technical roles in leading AI labs (7)
  - Organise an effective altruism group (1)
  - Policy careers (11)
  - Public intellectual (14)
  - Research management (7)
  - Software Engineering (32)
  - Specialist in emerging global powers (6)
  - Think tank research (3)
- Top-recommended careers (228)
  - AI safety technical research (45)
  - Biorisk strategy & policy (35)
  - Building the effective altruism community (19)
  - China-related AI safety & governance (10)
  - Forecasting research & implementation (24)
  - Founder of new projects (43)
  - Grantmaker (22)
  - Long-term AI policy (47)
  - Operations at high impact organisations (12)
  - Research into global priorities (43)
Skills (8)
Career advice & strategy (318)
- Accidental harm (19)
- Advice for undergraduates (15)
- Being ambitious (17)
- Career capital (55)
- Career planning (27)
- Community & coordination (10)
- Exploration (19)
- Graduate school (22)
  - PhDs (13)
- How to get a job (24)
- Leverage (7)
- Mental health (25)
- Now vs. Later (17)
- Personal fit (76)
  - Ability (19)
  - Job satisfaction (29)
- Risk (13)
- Unconventional advice (110)
Fields (137)
- Computer science (24)
- Economics (43)
- History (11)
- Law (9)
- Machine learning (27)
- Philosophy (23)
- Physics (4)
- Psychology (18)
- Statistics (7)
Other topics (206)
- About 80,000 Hours (67)
  - Updates (43)
- Anonymous advice (19)
- COVID-19 (23)
- Doing good in your current job (95)
  - Advocacy (32)
  - Donating effectively (27)
  - Income (30)
  - Volunteering (8)
- Promoting effective altruism (2)
- User stories (3)

Topic archive: Academic Research

Filter by content type:
All107
Podcasts77
Blog posts20
Career reviews5
Podcasts (80k After Hours)2
Key articles2
Skills1

All content tagged "Academic Research"

2024

November

#206 – Anil Seth on the predictive brain and how to study consciousness
Podcast

October

#203 – Peter Godfrey-Smith on interfering with wild nature, accepting death, and the origin of complex civilisation
Podcast

September

#202 – Venki Ramakrishnan on the cutting edge of anti-ageing science
Podcast

August

#198 – Meghan Barrett on challenging our assumptions about insects
Podcast
#196 – Jonathan Birch on the edge cases of sentience and why they matter
Podcast

June

#190 – Eric Schwitzgebel on whether the US is conscious
Podcast

May

#189 – Rachel Glennerster on how "market shaping" could help solve climate change, pandemics, and other global problems
Podcast
#188 – Matt Clancy on whether science is good
Podcast
#186 – Dean Spears on why babies are born small in Uttar Pradesh, and how to save their lives
Podcast

March

#183 – Spencer Greenberg on causation without correlation, money and happiness, lightgassing, hype vs value, and more
Podcast
#182 – Bob Fischer on comparing the welfare of humans, chickens, pigs, octopuses, bees, and more
Podcast

February

#179 – Randy Nesse on why evolution left us so vulnerable to depression and anxiety
Podcast
#178 – Emily Oster on what the evidence actually says about pregnancy and parenting
Podcast

2023

December

Research skills (Updated)
Skill
Academic research (Updated)
Career review

November

#173 – Jeff Sebo on digital minds, and how to avoid sleepwalking into a major moral catastrophe
Podcast
#172 – Bryan Caplan on why you should stop reading the news
Podcast

October

#168 – Ian Morris on whether deep history says we're heading for an intelligence explosion
Podcast

September

Research skills (First published)
Skill

August

#160 – Hannah Ritchie on why it makes sense to be optimistic about the environment
Podcast

May

#152 – Joe Carlsmith on navigating serious philosophical confusion
Podcast

March

#147 – Spencer Greenberg on stopping valueless papers from getting into top journals
Podcast
Luisa and Robert Long on how to make independent research more fun
Podcast (80k After Hours)
#146 – Robert Long on why large language models like GPT (probably) aren't conscious
Podcast

February

#145 – Christopher Brown on why slavery abolition wasn't inevitable
Podcast

January

#144 – Athena Aktipis on why cancer is actually one of the fundamental phenomena in our universe
Podcast

2022

December

#143 – Jeffrey Lewis on the most common misconceptions about nuclear weapons
Podcast
Marcus Davis on founding and leading Rethink Priorities
Podcast (80k After Hours)

November

#140 – Bear Braumoeller on the case that war isn't in decline
Podcast

October

#139 – Alan Hájek on puzzles and paradoxes in probability and expected value
Podcast

September

#137 – Andreas Mogensen on whether effective altruism is just for consequentialists
Podcast

August

#136 – Will MacAskill on what we owe the future
Podcast

July

#134 – Ian Morris on what big-picture history teaches us
Podcast

June

#131 – Lewis Dartnell on getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world
Podcast

May

#130 – Will MacAskill on balancing frugality with ambition, whether you need longtermism, & mental health under pressure
Podcast
#129 – Dr James Tibenderana on the state of the art in malaria control and elimination
Podcast

April

#128 – Chris Blattman on the five reasons wars happen
Podcast

2021

November

#117 – David Denkenberger on using paper mills and seaweed to feed everyone in a catastrophe, ft Sahil Shah
Podcast
#116 – Luisa Rodriguez on why global catastrophes seem unlikely to kill us all
Podcast
#115 – David Wallace on the many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics and its implications
Podcast

October

Public intellectual
Career review
Research into global priorities
Career review

September

#111 – Mushtaq Khan on how mainstream economics gets corruption and good governance all wrong
Podcast

July

#106 – Cal Newport on an industrial revolution for office work
Podcast

June

#104 – Dr Pardis Sabeti on the Sentinel system for detecting and stopping pandemics
Podcast
#103 – Max Roser on building the world's first great source of COVID-19 data at Our World in Data
Podcast
#102 – Tom Moynihan on why prior generations missed some of the biggest priorities of all
Podcast

May

Effective Altruism: Ten Global Problems — curated episodes from The 80,000 Hours Podcast
Article
#98 – Christian Tarsney on future bias and a possible solution to moral fanaticism
Podcast

March

#95 – Kelly Wanser on whether to deliberately intervene in the climate
Podcast

2020

December

#89 – Owen Cotton-Barratt on epistemic systems & layers of defense against potential global catastrophes
Podcast

November

#87 – Russ Roberts on whether it's more effective to help strangers, or people you know
Podcast

October

#86 – Hilary Greaves on Pascal's mugging, strong longtermism, and whether existing can be good for us
Podcast

August

Research questions that could have a big social impact, organised by discipline
Article
Why I’ve come to think global priorities research is more important than I thought
Blog post
#84 – Shruti Rajagopalan on what India did to stop COVID-19 and how well it worked
Podcast

July

#83 – Jennifer Doleac on ways to prevent crime other than police and prisons
Podcast
#82 – James Forman Jr on reducing the cruelty of the US criminal legal system
Podcast

May

#77 – Marc Lipsitch on whether we're winning or losing against COVID-19
Podcast

April

Policy and research ideas to reduce existential risk
Blog post
#74 – Dr Greg Lewis on COVID-19 & catastrophic biological risks
Podcast

March

#72 – Toby Ord on the precipice and humanity's potential futures
Podcast

January

#68 – Will MacAskill on the paralysis argument, whether we're at the hinge of history, & his new priorities
Podcast

2019

December

#67 – David Chalmers on the nature and ethics of consciousness
Podcast
#66 – Peter Singer on provocative advocacy, EA, how his ethical views have changed, and drowning children
Podcast

October

#64 – Bruce Schneier on how insecure electronic voting could break the United States — and surveillance without tyranny
Podcast

August

Philosophy academia
Career review

April

#56 – Persis Eskander on wild animal welfare and what, if anything, to do about it
Podcast

2018

December

#50 – David Denkenberger on how to feed all 8 billion people through an asteroid/nuclear winter
Podcast
#49 – Rachel Glennerster on a year's worth of education for under $1 and other development best buys
Podcast

October

#46 – Hilary Greaves on moral cluelessness, population ethics, & harnessing the brainpower of academia to tackle the most important research questions
Podcast
#45 – Tyler Cowen's stubborn attachments to maximising economic growth, making civilization more stable & respecting human rights
Podcast
New career review on becoming an academic researcher: Highlights on your chances of success, which fields have highest GRE scores, & having impact outside research
Blog post
Academic research (First published)
Career review

September

#42 – Amanda Askell on moral empathy, the value of information & the ethics of infinity
Podcast

August

#41 – David Roodman on incarceration, geomagnetic storms, & becoming a world-class researcher
Podcast

July

#38 – Yew-Kwang Ng on anticipating EA decades ago & how to make a much happier world
Podcast
#36 – Tanya Singh on ending the operations management bottleneck in effective altruism
Podcast

May

#33 – Anders Sandberg on what if we ended ageing, solar flares & the annual risk of nuclear war
Podcast
#32 – Bryan Caplan on whether the Case Against Education holds up, totalitarianism, & open borders
Podcast
#30 – Eva Vivalt on how little social science findings generalize from one study to another
Podcast
#29 – Anders Sandberg on three new resolutions for the Fermi Paradox and how to easily colonise the universe
Podcast

April

#28 – Owen Cotton-Barratt on why scientists should need insurance, PhD strategy & what if AI progresses fast
Podcast
#26 – Marie Gibbons on how exactly clean meat is created & the advances needed to get it in every supermarket
Podcast

March

#25 – Robin Hanson on why we have to lie to ourselves about why we do what we do
Podcast

February

#20 – Bruce Friedrich on inventing outstanding meat substitutes to end speciesism & factory farming
Podcast

January

#17 – Will MacAskill on moral uncertainty, utilitarianism & how to avoid being a moral monster
Podcast

2017

December

#16 – Michelle Hutchinson on global priorities research & shaping the ideas of intellectuals
Podcast

November

#15 – Phil Tetlock on how chimps beat Berkeley undergrads and when it's wise to defer to the wise
Podcast
Why you should consider applying for grad school (but make sure you’re aware of the potential drawbacks of attending!)
Blog post

October

#13 – Claire Walsh on testing which policies work & how to get governments to listen to the results
Podcast

June

#2 – David Spiegelhalter on risk, stats and improving understanding of science
Podcast

2015

September

Are too many people going into biomedical research – or too few?
Blog post

June

Economics PhDs
Career review

April

Get paid to do existential risk reduction research
Blog post

2014

January

Interview with leading HIV vaccine researcher – Prof. Sir Andrew McMichael
Blog post

2013

December

A comparison of medical research and earning to give
Blog post

October

Why I’m doing a PhD
Blog post

April

Is most research a waste?
Blog post

January

How to make a difference in research: An interview with Nick Bostrom
Blog post
Should you go into research? – part 2
Blog post

2012

December

3 Ways to Advance Science
Blog post
How to choose a research topic: An interview with Anders Sandberg
Blog post

October

Open Source Technology: A Career in Engineering
Blog post
How to do important research
Blog post

September

How to be a high impact philosopher, part II
Blog post

August

Should you go into research? – part 1
Blog post

May

How to be a high impact philosopher
Blog post

2011

November

High Impact Science
Blog post

Filter by content type:
All107
Podcasts77
Blog posts20
Career reviews5
Podcasts (80k After Hours)2
Key articles2
Skills1

Join our newsletter

Get weekly updates on our research, plus jobs and other opportunities to get involved.

Get 1-1 advice

Want to tackle a pressing global problem with your career?

Speak to an advisor

Our research

Start here
Career guide
List of world problems
List of top skills
List of careers
Advanced series
New releases
All our research

Future generations
Artificial intelligence
Anonymous advice
College advice

Take action

Find a job
Get 1-1 advice
Make a career plan

About us

Why 80,000 Hours?
Meet the team
Our impact and credibility
Our mistakes
Our donors
Contact us
Support us

Translations of our content

80,000 Hours is an Effective Ventures project. Effective Ventures Foundation (UK) (EV UK) is a charity in England and Wales (with registered charity number 1149828, registered company number 07962181, and is also a Netherlands registered tax-deductible entity ANBI 825776867). Effective Ventures Foundation USA Inc. (EV US) is a section 501(c)(3) organization in the USA (EIN 47-1988398). EV UK and EV US are separate charities that collaborate closely under the “Effective Ventures” name.

Please contact us to suggest ideas, improvements, or corrections.

We do our best to provide useful information, but how you use the information is up to you. We don’t take responsibility for any loss that results from the use of information on the site. Please consult our full legal disclaimer and privacy policy. See also our cookie notice and adjust your .