Company lists · Data refreshed September 2026
Top 25 Academic think tanks worldwide
RevenueBase identified 383 academic think tanks worldwide as of September 2026 and tracks 10,533 professional contacts across them, including 2,491 with verified work emails. The United States is the largest market and London the largest hub.
This list covers academic think tanks worldwide, matched on what each company actually does as described in its own words. Ranked by team size, largest first. Every row shows the company's own description, its RevenueBase Smart Search rating, and when it was last checked. Data refreshed September 19, 2026. Country and city lists for academic think tanks follow the table.
Published by RevenueBase, a B2B data infrastructure company. This list was built with RevenueBase Smart Search, the natural-language company search RevenueBase customers use to build their own targeted lists and unlock verified emails and direct dials at the companies on them. How these lists are built and judged.
The 25 largest academic think tanks worldwide
Ranked by team size| # | Company | Contacts | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 867 contacts → | ||||
Indirect evidence “The mission of Chatham House is to be a world-leading source of independent analysis, informed debate and influential ideas on how to build a prosperous and secure world for all.” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 2 | 524 contacts → | ||||
Strong evidence “Established in 1944 to promote Brazil’s social and economic development, Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) has consolidated itself as a one of the top 10 think tanks* in the world as…” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 3 | 366 contacts → | ||||
Indirect evidence “MDRC is a nonprofit, nonpartisan education and social policy research organization dedicated to learning what works to improve programs and policies that affect the poor.” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 4 | 313 contacts → | ||||
Indirect evidence “The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) is a unique institution, founded in 1831 by the Duke of Wellington, RUSI embodies nearly two centuries of forward thinking, free…” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 5 | 311 contacts → | ||||
Indirect evidence “The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace generates strategic ideas and independent analysis, supports diplomacy, and trains the next generation of scholar-practitioners to…” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 6 | 238 contacts → | ||||
Indirect evidence “Welcome to our House.” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 7 | 227 contacts → | ||||
Partial evidence “Thailand’s most respected economic think-tank with 30 years of policy research experiences.” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 8 | 169 contacts → | ||||
Indirect evidence “LISER is a Luxembourgish public research institute under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Higher Education and Research.” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 9 | 165 contacts → | ||||
Indirect evidence “CEPR is an independent, non‐partisan, pan‐European non‐profit organization.” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 10 | 94 contacts → | ||||
Partial evidence “Established in 2014, the Niskanen Center is a nonpartisan think tank that works to change public policy through direct engagement in the policymaking process: developing and…” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 11 | 90 contacts → | ||||
Partial evidence “About Us Centre for Public Policy Research (CPPR) is a think tank dedicated to extensive and in-depth research on current economic, social, and political issues.” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 12 | 86 contacts → | ||||
Indirect evidence “The Learning Policy Institute conducts and communicates independent, high-quality research to improve education policy and practice.” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 13 | 86 contacts → | ||||
Indirect evidence “Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Jakarta is an independent, non-profit organisation focusing on policy-oriented studies on domestic and international…” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 14 | 80 contacts → | ||||
Partial evidence “The Century Foundation is a progressive, independent, public policy think tank.” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 15 | 78 contacts → | ||||
Indirect evidence “INDEF is an independent and autonomous research and policy studies institution established on August 1995 in Jakarta.” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 16 | 67 contacts → | ||||
Indirect evidence “La Fundación Libertad es una entidad privada sin fines de lucro, que desde hace más 30 años trabaja en la investigación y difusión de temas de políticas públicas, dirigidas en…” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 17 | 66 contacts → | ||||
Partial evidence “EGMONT – The Royal Institute for International Relations is an independent think tank based in Brussels.” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 18 | 65 contacts → | ||||
Indirect evidence “The Mackinac Center for Public Policy is a nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to improving the quality of life for all Michigan residents by promoting sound…” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 19 | 65 contacts → | ||||
Indirect evidence “The Club of Rome is a platform of over 150 diverse thought leaders and changemakers working across geographies and sectors.” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 20 | 59 contacts → | ||||
Partial evidence “The Institut Choiseul is an independent think-tank dedicated to the analysis of contemporary strategic issues and international economic questions.” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 21 | 50 contacts → | ||||
Strong evidence “The Australia Institute is one of the country’s most influential public policy think tanks.” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 22 | 45 contacts → | ||||
Partial evidence “Orizzonti Politici è un Think Tank di giovani studenti che condividono la passione per la politica e l’economia.” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 23 | 45 contacts → | ||||
Indirect evidence “Fundado en 1990, Libertad y Desarrollo es un centro de estudios e investigación privado, independiente de todo grupo político, religioso, empresarial y gubernamental que se dedica…” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 24 | 44 contacts → | ||||
Indirect evidence “ARB’s philosophy is to bring light into darkness, generating insight for decision makers in the public policy arena & business environment so that when they are faced with hard…” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
| 25 | 44 contacts → | ||||
Indirect evidence “The Ramos Research Institute is a research institute working on original research, polling, and policy analysis to tackle today's wicked problems.” Source: RevenueBase Database · checked Sep 19, 2026Thanks. The Data Team will review it. | |||||
RevenueBase Smart Search
RevenueBase Smart Search assesses information from a company’s LinkedIn profile, information supplied directly by the company, its website, and other publicly available sources. It uses that information to rate how closely the company relates to this list’s category: academic think tanks. Every row carries its rating and the description the rating was read from, so each one can be checked rather than taken on trust.
- Strong evidence
- The company's own public description of its business names academic think tanks.
- Partial evidence
- Its own public description names part of academic think tanks, so it works in or next to the category without describing itself that way.
- Indirect evidence
- The description shown does not name academic think tanks. The match rests on the rest of the company's public profile rather than the one sentence quoted here, so this is the rating to check first.
RevenueBase Smart Search is how these lists are built: RevenueBase's data engine and AI assemble the companies that match a category defined in a user's own words, so a list can be about what companies actually do rather than about whichever industry code they were filed under.
Showing 25 of 383 academic think tanks worldwide
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Academic think tanks worldwide at a glance
As of Sep 19, 2026Companies by employee count
Email recency is reported on each country list linked below.
How this list was built
Company categories are rarely black and white. RevenueBase reads each company's own description of its business to decide whether it belongs among academic think tanks, so some rows will be adjacent to the category rather than pure plays. The description and RevenueBase Smart Search rating on every row are there so you can check each match yourself.
- Source
- The RevenueBase company graph: 60 million companies and 398.9 million professional contacts resolved from primary sources, queried with RevenueBase Smart Search, the natural-language company search available to every RevenueBase user.
- Coverage
- Every country. Country and city lists for academic think tanks are linked below.
- What qualifies
- Companies worldwide whose own description of what they do matches “academic think tanks”. Matching reads each company's description, not its industry code or its name.
- RevenueBase Smart Search
- RevenueBase Smart Search is how this list is assembled and how each row is rated. RevenueBase's data engine and AI assess a company's LinkedIn profile, information supplied directly by the company, its website and other publicly available information, then relate it to a category defined in a user's own words. Each row is rated strong evidence (its own description names academic think tanks), partial evidence (it names part of the category) or indirect evidence (the description shown names none of it and the match rests on the rest of the company's profile). The description supporting each rating is quoted on the row.
- What we exclude
- Companies whose own description does not clearly place them among academic think tanks, and records with no verified work email.
- Match quality
- In blind human judging of this matching method, 86% of matched companies were on target. Expect roughly 1 in 7 rows to be adjacent to the category rather than a pure play. Every row shows the company's own description and its RevenueBase Smart Search rating so you can judge each match yourself. Read the full methodology: how the lists are built, how the judging worked, and what the figure means.
- Ranking
- Team size, largest first: companies are ordered by the number of professionals RevenueBase tracks at each one. Employee ranges shown are reported bands, for context.
- Verification
- Every listed company carries at least one verified work email, 2,491 across the full list. Contacts re-verify on a rolling cadence, and each contact's own verification date is shown inside RevenueBase.
- Refresh
- This page's figures were pulled from the company graph on September 19, 2026. Lists refresh periodically as the graph is re-checked.
- Corrections
- Wrong category, wrong headquarters, or a company that has closed? Use “Report an issue” on any row. Reports go to the RevenueBase Data Team and feed back into the company graph.
Academic think tanks by location
1 lists · largest firstEvery Academic think tanks list RevenueBase publishes, by country and city. Counts are matching companies in each list as of its own refresh date.
Countries
Frequently asked
What is RevenueBase Smart Search?
RevenueBase Smart Search is how RevenueBase decides which companies belong on this list and how strongly each one fits. Its data engine and AI assess a company's LinkedIn profile, information supplied directly by the company, its website and other publicly available information, then relate it to the category the list is about. Each row is rated strong evidence when the company's own description names academic think tanks, partial evidence when it names part of the category, and indirect evidence when the description shown names none of it and the match rests on the rest of the company's profile.
How many academic think tanks are there worldwide?
RevenueBase identified 383 academic think tanks worldwide as of September 2026, matched on each company's own description of what it does rather than its industry code.
What is the largest company on this list?
Chatham House, headquartered in London, tops this list with the largest team on record.
Which country has the most academic think tanks?
The United States leads with 85 companies. Every academic think tanks list by country and city is linked on this page.
Which city has the most academic think tanks?
London leads with 14 headquartered companies, followed by Washington (14) and New York (11).
How do I get contact information for these companies?
A free RevenueBase account lets you run this exact search and work the top results, verified emails and direct dials included. Upgrading unlocks all 2,491 verified decision-maker contacts tracked across these 383 companies.
How current is this list?
The list refreshes periodically as the company graph is re-checked. This page's figures were pulled on September 19, 2026.
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About this data
RevenueBase is a B2B data infrastructure company. Its company graph covers 60 million companies and 398.9 million professional contacts, with emails verified on a rolling cadence rather than scraped once and left to decay. These company lists are generated directly from that graph with RevenueBase Smart Search, the same natural-language company search every RevenueBase user has: describe a market in plain words, get the companies that match, and add verified emails and direct dials for the people at them. It is the same data that powers RevenueBase's B2B data products, and a free account includes 500 credits to start. How these lists are built and judged.