Oxford Martin School: Public Lectures and Seminars

Dr Javier Lezaun and Professor Chas Bountra give a talk about drug discovery. Dr Javier Lezaun, Co-Director, Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, Oxford Martin School and James Martin Lecturer in Science and Technology Governance and Professor Chas Bountra, Chief Scientist (SGC), Professor of Translational Medicine, Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford

Professor Susan Lea, Professor Christoph Tang, Professor Jeffrey Almond and Dr Ian Feavers discuss strategies for vaccines for the 21st century. Vaccines have saved an estimated 500 million lives around the world since Edward Jenner discovered how to prevent smallpox infection in 1796. But a successful vaccine roll-out is about more than just medicine; it encompasses engineering, economics, policy...

Professor Bostrom on his book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies.

The Innovation Enigma - Is the current growth crisis a result of decades of technological stagnation in a risk-averse society? A dynamic Oxford Union debate about innovation and the coming technological deficit involving Garry Kasparov, 13th world chess champion, writer and political activist; Peter Thiel, technology entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist; Professor Kenneth Rogoff, Thomas D. Ca...

With Dr James Martin, Founder, Oxford Martin School. This is the first time in Earth's history that humanity that can study its situation and devise powerful ways to deal with the problems. Our future could be magnificent, but time is short. In our near future there is a need for extreme paradigm shifts, diverse in nature, and for which we are almost totally unprepared. This 'Jubillee' lecture cel...

With Elon Musk, CEO and Product Architect of Tesla Motors and the CEO/CTO of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX). Elon Musk, the Founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, and Chairman of SolarCity, speaks from his own experiences at the forefront of technology and innovation. This inspirational Oxford Martin School presentation at the Sheldonian Theatre covers space travel, electric vehicles and sol...

With Professor Paul Klenerman Principal Investigator, Institute for Emerging Infections. Paul Klenerman demonstrates the way our immune systems work and discusses the best way to boost our natural defences in an effort to fight infection from Hep C and HIV. Dr Bennett Foddy, Deputy Director, Institute for Science and Ethics, addresses the ethical dilemmas which can arise from the process of clinic...

With Professor Liam Dolan and Professor Jane Langdale, Co-Directors, Plants for the 21st Century Institute. As we struggle to feed the world's growing population is it ethically wrong not to use all the tools at our disposal to help increase food production? Liam Dolan and Jane Langdale explore the possibilities and benefits that could be derived from using scientific advancement to enhance agricu...

With Professor Myles Allen, Co-Director, Oxford Martin Programme on Resource Stewardship. You can show people all the evidence in the world about climate change, but if the policy debate is framed in an intractable way, it won't make any difference. And that's the problem. As climate modelling and scientific projections improve how much will people's behaviour change over the coming decades?

Remote controlled and autonomous robotic weapons are bringing new levels of complexity to modern warfare. It's when such robots are designed as lethal weapons that the threshold for moral justification gets higher.

With Kary Kasparov, world chess champion, writer and political activist. The world we live in now is very different from the one that was imagined 50 years ago. Past decades foresaw a future of flying cars and supersonic jets, but commercial air travel is slower in 2013 than it was in 1976. For years we were assured that we would have abundant clean and cheap energy; instead we have record fossil...

Larry Brilliant, President of the Skoll Global Threats Fund, gives a talk for the Oxford Martin School. In our interconnected world the possibilities for a deadly virus to spread rapidly are frightening. According to Dr Larry Brilliant, the modernity which is creating and causing the rapid spread of viruses, through international travel and global food supply chains, could actually provide us with...

William H. Janeway CBE, Senior Advisor and Managing Director at Warburg Pincus, gives a talk for the Oxford Martin School. The innovation economy begins with discovery and culminates in speculation. Over some 250 years, economic growth has been driven by successive processes of trial and error: upstream exercises in research and invention and downstream experiments in exploiting the new economic s...

Parag Khanna and Ayesha Khanna; Directors of The Hybrid Reality Institute, gives a talk for the Oxford Martin School public lecture series. With Professor Ian Goldin; Director, Oxford Martin Institute. The Information Age is giving way to the Hybrid Age, mankind's fifth major era of socio-technical relations. What distinguishes the Hybrid Age from previous periods is two-fold: the rapidly merging...

Professor Thomas Homer-Dixon gives a talk on Dehumanization for the Oxford Martin School Public Lectures series. Introduced by Professor Ian Goldin. Dehumanization is arguably a defining feature of the most brutal acts of human violence, such as saturation bombardment of civilian populations, terrorist attacks on urban centers, intense battlefield combat, and genocide. I propose a psychological ex...

Panel discussion on whether Globalisation can benefit the poor with Alex Gennie, Ian Goldin, Rushanara Ali MP, James Drummond and Nick Gowing. Globalisation is bound in a complex relationship with poverty. Its forces are powerful and can act to either destroy or radically improve the economic position of areas in development. Despite this, the opportunities that the phenomenon presents for develop...

Dr James Martin, Founder of the Oxford Martin School and founder of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. the largest nongovernmental organization in the world devoted exclusively to research and training to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Distinguished Public Lecture. Globalization has created a more interconnected, interdependent and complex world than ever witnessed before. Whilst this openness and connectivity has brought enormous benefits, it has also increased our vulnerability and exposure to global shocks, such as the recent financial crisis. Balancing these dimensions brings significant challenges at the global, regional an...

Sachs argues that for the U.S. to regain sound fiscal health the country must also reform its politics. The lecture is immediately followed by a panel discussion with: Professor Valpy FitzGerald, Department of International Development, Professor Ian Goldin, Oxford Martin School (chair), Professor Peter Tufano, Said Business School, Professor Adrian Wood, Department of International Development, P...

Dr Jill Tarter, Director, Center for SETI Research, SETI Institute gives a talk for the Oxford Martin School Seminar Series.

Professor Clive Hamilton delivers a critique of the consequentialist approach to the ethics of geoengineering, the approach that deploys assessment of costs and benefits in a risk framework to justify climatic intervention. Professor Hamilton argues that there is a strong case for preferring the natural, and that the unique and highly threatening character of global warming renders the standard ap...

Mass media serve vital roles in communication processes between science, policy and the public, and often stitch together perceptions, intentions, considerations, and actions regarding climate change. This talk will touch on salient and swirling contextual factors as well as competing journalistic pressures and norms that contribute to how issues, events and information have often become climate '...

Bishop and Green led a discussion based on their recent book, "The Road From Ruin: A New Capitalism for a Big Society". Together, they will take a look at what set us on the road to the recent financial crisis, whilst also highlighting the signs to guide us back to prosperity. Matthew Bishop is US Business Editor and New York Bureau Chief of The Economist. Michael Green is a leading independent ec...

The recent economic rise of China and India has attracted a great deal of attention--and justifiably so. Together, the two countries account for one-fifth of the global economy and are projected to represent a full third of the world's income by 2025. Yet, many of the views regarding China and India's market reforms and high growth have been tendentious, exaggerated, or oversimplified. This talk b...

Part of the School's intergrative seminar series. Delivered by Professor Patricia Hirl Longstaff, James Martin Senior Visiting Fellow, Professor, Syracuse University, Research Associate, Harvard Program on Information Resources Policy. Climate change, economic globalization, and many new levels of communication have all made many human, biological and technical systems more unpredictable. This has...