CIP Research Fellowship

Call for Proposals: Pilot Cohort

The Collective Intelligence Project is seeking three research fellows to work with our proprietary datasets and produce original academic and public-facing outputs at the intersection of AI, public values, and democratic governance.

This is an opportunity to conduct original, publishable research on questions at the intersection of AI, public values, and democratic governance, using data that does not exist anywhere else.

Fellowship size: 3 Fellows (pilot cohort)

Duration: 6–9 months

Commitment: 5–10 hours per week

Format: Remote, non-residential

Compensation: Fixed stipend paid in milestone-based tranches

Application deadline: Rolling

Data Available

Fellows will work across three CIP projects:

Global Dialogues — Recurring multi-country surveys tracking public attitudes toward AI across 70+ countries, with 7+ completed rounds. Data includes binary votes, pairwise comparisons, open-ended responses, and demographic segmentation. (Mostly) open on GitHub.

Collective Generation — Our democratic, bottom-up methodology for building AI evaluation frameworks through bridging consensus. Fellows will have access to datasets from deliberative sessions.

Weval — An open AI evaluation platform hosting 100+ community-contributed blueprints testing 112+ model configurations. Scores range from ~23% to ~95% on the same evaluations, reflecting genuine variation in how models handle socially complex tasks. Fellows will have access to codebase, evaluation platform, and internal tools for creating, hosting, and running evaluations.

Cohort Structure

To prevent overlap and encourage complementary work, each fellow will be selected to engage with the data through a distinct thematic lens. We are looking for one fellow per orientation:

  1. Democratic & Comparative

    Cross-national analysis of how diverse publics reason about AI values, governance, and risk. Possible topics include polarization and consensus patterns across countries; cultural and demographic drivers of AI attitudes; or comparative analysis of how deliberative processes surface different priorities across populations.

  2. Communication & Deliberation

    Analysis of how people articulate, reason about, and negotiate AI-related values in deliberative settings. Possible topics include discourse and framing patterns in open-ended responses; how reasoning shifts through exposure to other perspectives; or computational text analysis of qualitative feedback across languages and cultures.

  3. Governance & Institutions

    Analysis of what the data reveals about public demand for specific AI governance approaches. Possible topics include how trust in institutions shapes preferences for regulatory frameworks; where public consensus exists (or does not) on concrete policy questions; or how governance preferences cluster across national and political contexts.

These orientations are illustrative, not prescriptive. Strong proposals that engage seriously with the data and CIP’s mission will be considered regardless of exact framing.

Deliverables & Timeline

Compensation is tied to four milestones. Fellows will be paid in tranches upon delivery of each:

Phase I — Onboarding (Month 1): Signed agreement + 2-page Research Plan finalized

Phase II — Analysis (Month 3–4): Preliminary findings presentation to CIP team

Phase III — Draft (Month 6): CIP Working Paper (internal report) + 1 public blog post

Phase IV — Completion (Month 9): Submission to a peer-reviewed journal or conference

Who Should Apply

We are primarily looking for late-stage PhD candidates (ABD) or early-career postdoctoral researchers in Political Science, Computational Social Science, Sociology, or Computer Science (ML/AI). Candidates from adjacent disciplines with strong quantitative or mixed-methods backgrounds are welcome.

We are not primarily selecting on prestige or institutional affiliation. We are selecting for researchers who will produce rigorous, original work and who are genuinely motivated by the questions the data can answer.

What Fellows Receive

  • Exclusive access to new large-scale multi-country deliberative datasets on public AI values

  • Fixed stipend paid in four milestone-based tranches over 6–9 months

  • Co-authorship on CIP Working Papers

  • Public visibility via CIP’s channels and affiliation with a recognized AI governance organization

  • Peer network with the other two fellows in the cohort

  • Direct input into future CIP research projects and data collections

How to Apply

Applications must include the following:

  • A 1-page research proposal describing your proposed analysis, the specific data you would draw on, and why the questions are worth answering. Proposals should be grounded in publicly available data and/or the Global Dialogues data dictionary (available on GitHub).

  • A CV or resume (2 pages max).

  • A brief statement (200–300 words) describing your experience with large datasets and your interest in CIP’s work.

  • A writing sample demonstrating analytical rigor (a paper, working paper, or blog post).

Before applying, please explore the publicly available Global Dialogues data on GitHub (github.com/collect-intel/global-dialogues).

We will review applications on a rolling basis and aim to contact shortlisted candidates within two weeks of the deadline for interviews. Final selection of 3 fellows will follow shortly after.

Apply Now →

Questions? Contact us at fellowship@cip.org.

About CIP

The Collective Intelligence Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit research organization building the tools and knowledge needed for democratic oversight of AI. Our work spans large-scale longitudinal survey research, deliberative methodologies for AI governance and broader Alignment Assemblies, open AI evaluation infrastructure, and preference verification frameworks. We believe that getting AI right requires the active, informed participation of the publics it will affect, and we build the infrastructure to make that possible.