Exciting! Why the relocation from Switzerland to the UK? The fact that there are more EA/X-risk projects already in London seems like both a pro (more networking and community opportunities, better access to mentors) and a con (less differentiation with other projects like ERA and MATS, less neglected than mainland Europe fellowships).
Feel free to not reply if you deliberately don’t want to make this reasoning public.
Hi Oscar, thanks for the question! To clarify, only the fellowship has moved to the UK, not our entire organisation.
We’ve thought a lot about the pros and cons of moving from Switzerland and largely agree with your points.[1] The main driver for our decision was Switzerland’s comparatively small GCR network.
We see the fellowship as an opportunity to immerse fellows in a rich intellectual environment, which London’s – and especially LISA’s – GCR ecosystem offers. Our experience of running fellowships outside of established hubs suggests that fellowships alone are not a great vehicle to build a new GCR hub due to their seasonal nature and limited ability to retain people long-term. Nevertheless, we do see significant value in diversification and are considering future projects outside established GCR hubs for this reason.
Hope this explains our thinking, happy to answer more questions.
Exciting! Why the relocation from Switzerland to the UK? The fact that there are more EA/X-risk projects already in London seems like both a pro (more networking and community opportunities, better access to mentors) and a con (less differentiation with other projects like ERA and MATS, less neglected than mainland Europe fellowships).
Feel free to not reply if you deliberately don’t want to make this reasoning public.
Hi Oscar, thanks for the question! To clarify, only the fellowship has moved to the UK, not our entire organisation.
We’ve thought a lot about the pros and cons of moving from Switzerland and largely agree with your points.[1] The main driver for our decision was Switzerland’s comparatively small GCR network.
We see the fellowship as an opportunity to immerse fellows in a rich intellectual environment, which London’s – and especially LISA’s – GCR ecosystem offers. Our experience of running fellowships outside of established hubs suggests that fellowships alone are not a great vehicle to build a new GCR hub due to their seasonal nature and limited ability to retain people long-term. Nevertheless, we do see significant value in diversification and are considering future projects outside established GCR hubs for this reason.
Hope this explains our thinking, happy to answer more questions.
Mentor access isn’t a huge concern for us, since we expect most mentor-mentee interactions to happen virtually either way.
Makes sense, sounds good!