The Global Priorities Institute (GPI) at the University of Oxford - in association with the Department of Economics - is currently advertising two-year and four-year positions (Postdoctoral and Senior Research Fellows in Economics). The central focus of GPI is what we call ‘global priorities research’, research which revolves around the question “What should we do with a given unit of resources if our aim is to do the most good?” This covers a wide variety of topics in economics, including: growth theory; the economics of climate change and other catastrophic risks; discounting; game theory and mechanism design; forecasting and Bayesian updating; decision theory; and modelling altruism. More information and example research questions can be found in GPI’s research agenda.
For current graduate students, postdocs at GPI are a great way to launch an academic career. Team-based and individual research on global priorities topics is combined with substantial freedom to pursue one’s own unrelated projects (e.g. working on publications related to a recent PhD dissertation), there is no teaching obligation, plenty of funding for infrastructure and travel, and the Institute takes support for career development very seriously. GPI is as yet too young to have an established placement record, but we confidently expect GPI postdocs to go on to tenure-track positions in the very best research universities.
More generally, GPI is a vibrant and supportive research environment, with plenty of opportunities for informal discussion as well as multiple more structured research events each week.
Applications close on 15 November (midday UK time), and more details on the posts can be found on the Postdoctoral and Senior Research Fellow position pages on the GPI website. We particularly encourage applications from women, black and ethnic minority candidates, as these groups are underrepresented in economics.
If you are interested in global priorities research or GPI in general but these posts are not right for you, you can also have a look at our opportunities page for more information. There, you can also fill out an expression of interest to get in touch.
Please contact gpi-office@philosophy.ox.ac.uk if you have any questions or would like to explore further – we look forward to hearing from you.