(Last updated: August 2024) - EA UK Website
Summary
In this post I’m attempting to give an overview of what EA looks like in the UK, including communities and organisations with a range of affiliation with EA. If you are visiting or new to the UK and are looking to get connected to the local EA community, this guide may be a useful place to start.
EA Hubs in the UK
Most of the people working at EA related organisations are in London, Oxford or Cambridge (sometimes known as Loxbridge), with some remote workers around the UK. It’s quite easy to get from London to Oxford or Cambridge, being about an hour by train, and people regularly travel between them.
London
London probably has the largest number of people interested in EA. There are roughly 200-300 people working at EA related organisations although the majority of people interested in EA are working in the private sector, civil service, academia, healthcare or (non EA) nonprofits. There are also university groups in London at Imperial College London, King's College London, University College London and the London School of Economics.
There isn't one main EA community in London, there are quite a few subgroups based around different causes, workplaces and interests. There are also people who have an interest but attend an event or get involved with a relevant opportunity once every few years. You can sign up to the London EA WhatsApp community here
Subcommunities
- Workplace/Cause Communities
- Ambitious Impact are near Liverpool Street and with each new cohort there are more organisations set up that work from the office or nearby, mainly on global health & development, health security or animal welfare
- Conjecture are close to London Bridge focusing on AI Safety
- London Initiative for Safe AI in Shoreditch
- There is a London meetup group on the Hive slack
- There is a WhatsApp chat for global development professionals with an interest in EA
- Profession communities
- EA Finance has quite a few members in London and they have meetups every few months
- EA Tech have meetups every month or two
- High Impact Medicine
- There is a group for people who are interested in politics and EA
- University groups
- There are 4 quite active groups, roughly 20 volunteer organisers as well as Arcadia Impact supporting students interested in EA
- ICL
- KCL
- UCL
- LSE
- Interest communities
- EA for Christians have had meetups in London every few months
- There are also meetups for people to play football, board games, dance, go to gigs, stitch and climb
There are now quite a few EA related organisations in London, in 2015 there was just Founders Pledge and some Givewell recommended charities.
- EA Meta
- Ambitious Impact
- 80,000 Hours
- Arcadia Impact - supporting EA student groups in London, AI meetups and a co-working space for EA projects
- Rethink Priorities ~18 people based in UK
- Social Change Lab
- Founders Pledge
- Global Development
- Animal Welfare - Most of these are the UK based teams for international orgs
- AI Alignment
- Long Term Future/Existential Risks
There are some remote staff in London for various EA related organisations, such as Animal Charity Evaluators, Centre for Effective Altruism, Open Philanthropy, Our World in Data and Giving Green.
Oxford
Oxford has two main groups, EA Oxford (mostly university students), and professionals who work at EA organisations, mainly at Trajan House. Organisations at Trajan House include:-
Cambridge
EA in Cambridge has a student group and an office. There are a few EA related organisations as well as academics and other professionals.
Outside of Loxbridge
Outside of London, Oxford and Cambridge there aren’t many active city/regional groups (if you know of any that are active, let me know). In the last few years other groups have been tried in different cities but don’t tend to get much uptake.
There is the Centre for Enabling EA Learning and Research (formerly known as the EA Hotel) in Blackpool with about 15-25 people.
Student Groups
There are a few student groups that are relatively active although which groups are most active varies from year to year.
London
- Coworking space set up by Arcadia Impact near Farringdon. You can express interest in working there via this form
- Ambitious Impact have an office near Liverpool Street that sometimes has people coworking from other organisations
- London Initiative for Safe AI in Shoreditch has office memberships
Oxford
- Trajan House - application form
- The EA Oxford student group has access to coworking and event space during term times
Cambridge
Blackpool
Events
In person and virtual events are advertised on our newsletter, website and WhatsApp community.
EA UK Links
If there is anything missing from above that you would like added or changed, let me know.
Thanks for putting this together! We have just announced ERA (Existential Risk Alliance), and our website is at https://erafellowship.org