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Postdoctoral researcher in moral circle expansion (EXPIRED)

Sentience Institute

Job category Postdoc or similar / Contract type open
AOS Applied Ethics, Ethics
AOS categories Applied Ethics
Ethics
AOC Applied Ethics, Ethics
AOC categories Applied Ethics
Ethics
Workload Full time
Vacancies 1
Location Remote work
Organization based in New York, New York, United States
Start date Flexible, sometime around September 2020
Job description

Sentience Institute (SI) is seeking a postdoctoral researcher to study the expansion of humanity's moral circle, particularly in the contexts of animal ethics or artificial intelligence. This position offers a lot of flexibility with few requirements other than the production of high-quality research that fits within SI's mission. The researcher will be able to work with a variety of qualitative and quantitative research methods to better understand how humanity comes to include various entities, such as farmed animals, wild animals, and artificial sentience, in its scope of moral concern.

The postdoctoral researcher will be able to independently plan, implement, and publish research with feedback from colleagues at SI. There is a large amount of flexibility in which projects to pursue as long as they fall in SI's general purview.

More Information:

  • Employment type: Full-time (US "at-will" or UK "permanent"); we may consider a contract or half-time role for exceptional candidates.
  • Location: Remote, US-based (we may be able to make arrangements for international hires, but we are unable to sponsor US visas); current staff are in NYC and London.
  • Experience type: Several years of professional or academic social science research. However, we will extend full consideration to applications with less consideration.
  • Start date: Flexible, sometime around September 2020
  • Work style / Supervision: Relatively independent with frequent peer feedback
  • Salary: $45,000-60,000 (or international equivalent per costs of living) dependent on qualifications and need
  • Paid time off: 28 days per year (all-inclusive)
  • Work schedule: Flexible
  • Professional development: Employees will have opportunities to attend conferences and seminars relevant to their work and engage in other professional development opportunities
  • Job title: The exact job title is flexible (e.g. Researcher, Postdoctoral Research Fellow) depending on the experience and interests of the applicant.

Required Qualifications:

  • Prior research experience in academia, think tanks, another research institution, or independent/freelance work
  • Expertise in at least one methodology used by SI, such as designing, running, and analyzing experiments
  • Interest in research that furthers SI mission of studying moral circle expansion
  • General research ability, such as being able to read and understand a wide range of qualitative and quantitative literature
  • General writing ability, such as writing a paper publishable in a top peer-reviewed journal
  • Ability to work mostly independently with limited structure or supervision, with a willingness to make major research decisions collaboratively with others at SI

Preferred Attributes:

We encourage you to apply even if you don't meet some or any of these:

  • Graduate-level education, preferably a Ph.D., in the social sciences or a related field (e.g. applied ethics, digital humanities)
  • Comfort with making big-picture research decisions and navigating very open-ended research questions
  • Comfort with speculation and making judgements based on limited evidence when stronger evidence is not available, including comfort with changing your mind based on new evidence
  • Familiarity with the farmed animal and its strategies, and particularly with the debates and research on effective animal advocacy
  • Familiarity with the ideas of effective altruism
How to apply
Application type Online
Web address to apply https://sentienceinstitute.org/researcher-opening
Hard deadline July 31, 2020, 7:59pm EST
Contact
Web address for more information https://sentienceinstitute.org/
Contact name Sentience Institute
Contact email
Bookkeeping
Time created July 14, 2020, 3:15pm UTC
Scheduled expiry date July 31, 2020, 7:59pm EST
Expired on August 1, 2020, 8:46pm EST
Last updated October 2, 2020, 3:00pm UTC
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