Research Fellow — Managed Honey Bees

Overview

Fairer Fields is a new organization that works to make agriculture more humane for all by accelerating better agricultural practices for animals, people, and the world. We are currently:

• Researching and implementing more humane insecticides and insecticide alternatives.
• Conducting research to identify promising new ways to help animals and people impacted by plant agriculture, especially in areas such as pollination services, biological control, and mechanized harvesting.

We’re hiring a Research Fellow for a 1-year role to explore promising interventions in pollination services and honey production to improve the welfare of managed honey bees. Their role will be to explore the viability of potential interventions including possibilities that are bottlenecked on further scientific research. If successful the Fellow will have the opportunity to convert into a permanent role leading a coordinated research program and intervention development project to bring the intervention to deployment.

The Fellow will have unusual latitude to define the development of this field, direct meaningful research funding toward questions they think matter, and if the work goes well, build and run the program that follows.

Apply for this role here. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

About Fairer Fields

Fairer Fields works to address the impacts of plant agriculture on animal and human welfare. Our current focus is on moving US agriculture to more humane insecticide practices. We also conduct and fund prioritization and scientific research on other topics, such as mechanized harvesting, pollination services, and biological control.

Fairer Fields is small: we have 6 staff, and we expect to remain under 15 total staff for the next year. We have a culture that fosters individual agency and accountability, with a high degree of focus on near-term, specific goals. As you progress through the hiring process, we’ll share more about the culture we’re working to build as an organization, and the working norms we follow.

About the Role

The Research Fellow’s core responsibility is exploring possible interventions in commercial pollination services and honey production. These interventions will specifically target challenges faced by managed honey bees, to improve farm productivity and animal welfare. 

Commercial pollination is one of the largest insect industries, in terms of animals impacted, and encompasses a wide range of potential stressors for bees, including thermal stress, increased exposure to agricultural fungicides and insecticides, and heightened exposure to pathogens and parasites. Routine practice includes long-distance transport, supplemental feeding, miticide treatment, colony splitting, and queen replacement. Our interest is in the welfare of these bees, and how these questions intersect with farmer agency and agricultural productivity — whether these practices cause harm we should care about, whether alternatives exist, and whether anyone could be persuaded to adopt them. We take seriously the possibility that for some of these, the answer is “no,” and part of the Fellow’s job is to find out if that’s the case.

In this role you’ll:

• Conduct desk research on potential interventions, and develop ideas for new interventions.
• Meet with external experts in pollination services and brokering, beekeeping, and entomology to seek their input and feedback.
• Ultimately, produce internal reports and models on the viability of potential pollination services interventions to inform Fairer Fields’ prioritization.

Following the Fellowship, conditional on promising interventions being identified, the Fellow may have the opportunity to convert into a permanent role leading a coordinated research program to take the most promising interventions forward, or running a delivery program to apply them in the field. We’re especially excited about candidates eager not only to conduct research, but to work on coordinating research across multiple disciplines and experts.

This role will have relatively little opportunity to publish academically or publicly, and this position is likely not suited for candidates primarily interested in turning their research into public outputs — while much of our work might be adaptable for academic publication, our priority is on internal research. However, the role may eventually involve making significant academic grants, many of which might lead to published research.

About You

We’re open to many profiles and backgrounds for this role, and we expect academic experience in entomology, agricultural science, animal welfare, or ecology will be especially relevant.

The ideal candidate has the following characteristics:

• A strong demonstrated ability to understand and interpret research in at least two of the following areas:
  • Entomology
  • Agricultural science, especially related to pollination services
  • Animal welfare
  • Ecology
• Comfort with uncertainty and the ability to translate that uncertainty into models.
  • We will not quickly resolve the biggest uncertainties this project faces. The ideal candidate will be comfortable with that and comfortable making calibrated, careful recommendations despite that uncertainty.
• A high degree of reasoning transparency in their writing.
  • Our work depends on our ability to communicate transparently and clearly about our reasoning and confidence internally, so we’re looking for candidates able to communicate in this style.
• A willingness to explore open-ended questions, even if they might not lead to useful results.
  • We expect that what we are doing is hard, and the next few years will be rife with disappointing outcomes and results. This work involves exploring open-ended, difficult questions, and requires being resilient to these disappointments when they arise.
• Comfort working in an environment that requires a high degree of autonomy, agency and personal accountability.
  • Fairer Fields’ operating model and small size require staff who are comfortable managing their own time, and acting with a high degree of agency. We have minimal management and supervision internally — this means you’ll often be responsible for driving your own results.
• Comfort with moving quickly when necessary, and working on ambitious goals.
  • We work in a highly goal-driven manner, often on fairly quick turnaround times — the ideal candidate will work well under these constraints.
• A high degree of conscientiousness and carefulness in research.
  • We’re trying to do something quite difficult with our work. This requires being careful and ensuring we meet a high quality bar.
• While we don’t require a PhD, candidates will need to have a significant degree of research literacy, and the ability to keep up with relevant fields.

Finding someone with all of these traits is ideal, but we will consider all candidates with relevant backgrounds. If you think you might be a good fit but don’t have all our ideal characteristics, we encourage you to apply regardless.