Learn to research and prioritise between different high-impact topics.
Turn your thesis into your stepping stone towards real-world impact, at your own pace.
Your thesis can be more than something to get through. It can help with an important problem, test which kind of work suits you, and build the skills and connections for an impactful career. This free course gives you the same curriculum, frameworks and exercises from our 8-week Accelerator, so you can work through them at your own pace!
The course suits you if you are about to choose a thesis topic, are deciding between research directions, or want your research to connect to an impactful career. It is open to any discipline and any cause area, from AI safety and global health to animal welfare and climate, and more.
The self-paced course is free and ideal for students who want to work through the content at their own pace.
If you would prefer weekly facilitated group sessions with a fixed cohort, take a look at our 8-week Accelerator. You are more than welcome to enroll in this course, and also take part in our other programs, like the Accelerator, Fellowships, and 1:1 Advising.
Open to students at all levels: Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD.
Each module includes readings, a worksheet and journaling prompts. Everything is hosted on Lens Academy, our online learning platform.
Module 1: Foundations to Impact. Use the Ikigai framework to explore what impact you want to have, and discover a range of impactful career paths.
Module 2: Selecting a High-Impact Problem. Survey pressing global problems and use Importance, Neglectedness and Tractability (ITN) to choose one worth your time.
Module 3: Generating & Prioritising Research Questions. Find the key bottleneck in your problem area, brainstorm widely, then narrow down to your top 1–2 questions.
Module 4: Stakeholder Mapping & Outreach. Work out who would actually use your findings, reach out to them, and learn how to run useful conversations.
Module 5: Developing Your Theory of Change. Map the path from your research to real-world change, and test the assumptions along the way.
Module 6: Reverse Engineering Your Thesis. Start from what stakeholders need, define a concrete output, and design a research question that delivers it.
Module 7: Unblocking Your Impactful Career. Use the Head, Heart and Hand framework to find out what is holding your career direction back, and take concrete next steps.
Module 8: Bringing It Together. Pull your work into a short presentation and reflect on where you go from here.
Community: Self-paced doesn’t mean doing it alone! Join our WhatsApp community to find accountability buddies and peers working on similar topics. We will also host workshops and bootcamps that you can register for to supplement your self-paced acourse.
Peer discussions: Each module suggests a simple peer-discussion format if you’d like to go through the course with others.
Around 15 hours in total across the 8 modules. Start anytime and work through them at your own pace.
A high-impact problem and research question you have chosen to work on
A thesis/research topic that aligns with your impactful career path
A list of real stakeholders to talk to
A Theory of Change for your project
Clarity on your next steps for your impactful career path
Whether you’re a student, expert, or organistion, join us in supporting the next generation of people using research and their careers to tackle global challenges.
