I’m basically always interested in potential lessons for EA/EA-related projects from various social movements/fields/projects.
Note that you can find existing research that hasn’t been discussed (much) on the Forum and link-post it (I bet there’s a lot of useful stuff out there), maybe with some notes on your takeaways.
Example movements/fields/topics:
Environmentalism — I’ve heard people bring up the environmentalist/climate movement a bunch in informal discussions as an example for various hypotheses, including “movements splinter/develop highly counterproductive & influential factions” or “movements can get widespread interest and make policy progress” etc.
The effectiveness of protest — I’m interested in more research/work on this (see e.g. this and this).
Modern academia (maybe specific fields) — seems like there are probably various successes/failures/ideas we could learn from.
I’m basically always interested in potential lessons for EA/EA-related projects from various social movements/fields/projects.
Note that you can find existing research that hasn’t been discussed (much) on the Forum and link-post it (I bet there’s a lot of useful stuff out there), maybe with some notes on your takeaways.
Example movements/fields/topics:
Environmentalism — I’ve heard people bring up the environmentalist/climate movement a bunch in informal discussions as an example for various hypotheses, including “movements splinter/develop highly counterproductive & influential factions” or “movements can get widespread interest and make policy progress” etc.
The effectiveness of protest — I’m interested in more research/work on this (see e.g. this and this).
Modern academia (maybe specific fields) — seems like there are probably various successes/failures/ideas we could learn from.
Animal welfare
Mohism (see also)
Medicine/psychology in different time periods
Some resources, examples, etc. (not exhaustive or even a coherent category):
Social and intellectual movements (topic page)
Key Lessons From Social Movement History
Why do social movements fail: Two concrete examples
Some history topics it might be very valuable to investigate (and Humanities Research Ideas for Longtermists )
More generally: Research agendas, questions, and project lists