Researching and thinking for living? Beats working!
We want to be perfectly clear, right from the start, that we are not academics.
If that’s what you are looking for, become an academic.
We are well-informed, intellectually curious doers. We are business people who respect the power and importance of ideas and sound reasoning.
We have seen enough self-defeating organisational nonsense to know there must be a better way to do pretty much anything. In both private and public spheres, the quality of strategic thinking and of management thinking and action needs radically to improve if we have any hope of addressing the polycrisis we face today. That means confronting the future honestly and reflectively, as well as scouring history for insights as to what might work and what will not. As Sanatayana pointed out, learning from history requires retention.
We have a mission. But we cannot realise it alone. We need a band.
Yes, our founders are old enough to know the lyrics to all the songs in The Blues Brothers.
If you think working with us to realise our mission it might be an interesting way to spend your days, read on.
What we are looking for
We want people who can research and present an argument. Then take the opposite view and present that argument. Then refer to sound principles of political, economic, social and anthropological reasoning to write an engaging argument for which works bettter pragmatically.
You will need to be able to change your mind, but not on a whim. We want principled thinkers and committed citizens are are, or can quickly become, economically literate.
We want natural scientists, philosophers, economists, people who have studied psychology, politics, literature, history and who have a passion for their subject.
We want people who don’t mind a robust argment on what will be some pretty contentious material — snowflakes are not sought and should find a well-meaning charitable NGO to work for.
If you can reason, argue and write, there may be a fit. You also need to be able to work in teams and collaborate with people who will have different views from yours. And you should be handily numerate. We won’t be doing a lot of matrix algebra or integral calculus, but you should know what they are, what they are used for and at least some of the basics.
But statistics is a different story. There will be plenty of both population and inferential statistics, Bayesian logic, use of stochastic methods and possibly even a bit of SEM (no, ‘equation’), network analysis and the like.
You’ll have a degree; may be even two or three (or more). And, unless you already hold a doctoral degree, we’ll probably expect you to do more.
There will be plenty you don’t know, but what is most important is to recognise that and to have a passion for exposing and fillling in the gaps.
We are looking for quality people at any level of seniority and experience. But we are very choosy.
And you’ll probably like coffee. After all, who doesn’t?
What we offer
Holidays in Santorini? Well, that’s up to you.
However, we are not types who are tied to the office and we understand what it is like when the sun is hot or, or there’s a test at Lord’s (or the Oval), if there is snow on the tracks or the baby just won’t settle down.
Our office is in London, but you don’t have to be — at least, not all the time.
We are willing to compensate people reasonably for their travel expenses and we don’t believe that, just because we are not-for-profit, you should go hungry three days a month (except by choice).
We will expect our people to keep learning, either formally or informally or both. If it is the former, we will help with the cost, but, depending on circumstances, there may be a bonded period afterwards.
We realise that, for many people, think tank work is a stepping stone to other careers. We support that and will do what we can to support it. And getting ahead should be based on merit (Rawls 101) and performance. We don’t go in for organsational political bullshit.
The main message we that we believe in individuals taking responsibility for their time, the organisation and timeliness of their work, the quality of their work and the quality of its presentation (although, probably not the layout). We do not seek the limelight — if its your work, you present it, regardless of the audience. And we will expect you to do so. But you needn’t worry that we’ll throw you in the deep end unprepared, so to speak.
By the time you leave us, you’ll be superb researcher, a skilled and effective developer of ideas, a sparking writer who can bring personality to your writing, a kick-ass interviewer and a natural and effective speaker and presenter of ideas. Or, that’s the ambition.
Most important is you will be doing meaningful work and promoting, perhaps even provoking, democratic debate. We’ll certainly expect you to participate in that debate, constructively and from a position of knowledge.
And we don’t believe in micro-management, but acknowledge that trust is earned and is a two-way street.
If that sounds like you, tell us more about you.
But not too much.
Tell us about you.
We are not a bureacracy and we don’t approach finding and recruiting gxood people bureacratically.
If we think you might br a good fit for Futuresphere, we’ll arrange a preliminary discussion by video. If that works out, we’ll meet face-to-face. That will probably be casual catch-up at a cafe or lunch and if that goes well, thing will start to get serious.
Becuase we are very careful about whom we choose, we will expect all prospective think-tankers to undertake online psychometric tests. Don’t let that one surprise you.
We are not discriminatory (we are traditional liberals, after all) so we feel comfortable about asking lots of questions that wouldn’t make it through the ‘thought police’ elsewhere. After all, we will be working on all sorts of contentious topics, not the least of which will be politics, religion and foreign policy, ethics & reasoning, so we need to know up-front where you stand. There are no right or wrong answers. We are more interested in the quality of the dialogue.
To start with, please send us the following:
(i) a brief resume outlining your adademic background and work experience, and anything else you think we’ll need to know;
(ii) a piece of orginal written work of which you are particularly proud. It needn’t be on topic and could be an essay, a presentation, an academic paper (published or unpublished) as long as it is your work
(iii) a brief explanation as to why you chose that work; and
(iv) a one-page statement of why you would choose us and why we should choose you.
You can upload these below. Please submit them in .pdf format.
Please including your name in the filenames of the documents you submit.
Yes, I’m interested
Once you have this material prepared and savied in pdf format, you can submit them using the application form. To do so, click Open form below.
While we may work with associates from other places, we are only interested in recruiting people in the UK who already have the right to live and work in the UK. We do not sponsor applicants’ visa applications.