Oxford Martin School: Public Lectures and Seminars

The Minister for Development and Africa, Andrew Mitchell MP, will join us to discuss how to address these challenges as well as seize new opportunities. The UK launched an international development White Paper in November 2023, setting out seven areas for action across a broad range of development themes and policy areas. The White Paper recognises the increasingly contested world we face, with a...

Hannah Ritchie discusses her new book 'Not the end of the world' with Prof Charles Godfray. We are bombarded by doomsday headlines that tell us the soil won't be able to support crops, fish will vanish from our oceans, that we should reconsider having children. But in this talk, data scientist Hannah Ritchie, author of Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustain...

Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator, explores the implications of growing paralysis, polarisation and uncertainty for a world in a race against time to achieve systemic and transformational change. Conflicts, climate change, rising inequalities…. the list of crises is long and growing. But it doesn’t really matter what we call this unprecedented moment in history, in which human activity has become...

Adama Dieng, former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, July 2012 to July 2020, discusses the UN's role in the global collective responsibility to prevent genocide and other mass atrocities. Adama considers how the UN can learn from the past and take effective action to prevent mass violence set against a background of increasing commis...

After a summer of extreme heatwaves, devastating wildfires and deadly flooding across the world, all made worse by climate change, the Rt Hon Sir Alok Sharma, President of COP26 in Glasgow 2021, will discuss the ongoing climate crisis. In the run up to COP28, Sir Alok will describe his hopes for the summit and his views on the future of the COP process, as well as the role of the UK in internation...

Yves Daccord, former CEO of the International Committee of the Red Cross, joins us at the Oxford Martin School. The history of humanitarianism is one of vulnerabilities, power, mobilisation and adaptation. This has been true since humanitarian aid became an industry in its own right and continues to be so today. The reaffirmed sovereignty of states, the zero risk practices of the major donors, and...

A discussion on leaders and populism with Lord Patten, Gideon Rachman, Margaret MacMillan and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira Since the beginning of the millennium, when Vladimir Putin took power in Russia, authoritarian leaders have come to dominate global politics. Self-styled strongmen have risen to power in Moscow, Beijing, Delhi, Brasilia, Budapest, Ankara, Riyadh and Washington. These leaders are...

Nick Westcott, Director of the Royal African Society, discusses the African State. African states have been in flux since long before colonial powers carved up the continent into bite-sized chunks at the end of the 19th century. In the 60 years since most became independent, new trends have emerged. Some have reflected history, both colonial and pre-colonial, from ethnic rivalries and migrating po...

In this event chaired by Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, Oliver Bullough discusses his best selling and critically acclaimed book, 'Butler to the World: How Britain Became the Servant of Tycoons, Tax Dodgers, Kleptocrats and Criminals'. In Butler to the World, Bullough reveals how the UK has become a hospitable location for oligarchs and kleptocrats from all over the world - a place where they can hid...

MPs Andrew Mitchell and Margaret Hodge discuss illicit finance and their work on improving regulations. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and resulting sanctions regime has shed light on the United Kingdom’s harbouring of illicit wealth from around the world. It has also revealed the centrality of enablers in the legal and financial sectors in laundering oligarchs’ monies and reputations. As co-chairs...

Claire Craig and Sarah Dillon discuss their new book. There is an urgent need to take stories seriously in order to improve public reasoning. The challenges of using scientific evidence, of distinguishing news from fake news, and of acting well in anticipation of highly uncertain futures, are more visible now than ever before. Across all these areas of public reasoning, stories create profound new...

The event launched a book by the Emerging Markets Forum (EMF), a Washington DC based not-for-profit think tank focused on emerging economies. The book takes a long-term perspective of emerging market economies through 2060. It highlights some of the fundamental and structural changes in the global economy accelerated by the pandemic as well as changes in geopolitics. It looks at the global megatre...

Dr Leroy Hood, CEO of Phenome Health, discusses his strategy for precision population health If one takes a systems approach to healthcare, it is obvious that it should be predictive, preventive, personalised and participatory (P4). This can be accomplished, in part, by a vision which includes following the health trajectory of each individual with a data-driven (genome/longitudinal phenome) appro...

Stefan Dercon talks about his new book, with further discussion from David Pilling (Financial Times) and Melinda Bohannon (FCDO) In the last thirty years, the developing world has undergone tremendous changes. Overall, poverty has fallen, people live longer and healthier lives, and economies have been transformed. And yet many countries have simply missed the boat. Oxford’s Stefan Dercon’s new boo...

Dr Tara Garnett (director of TABLE and fellow of the Oxford Martin School) in conversation with Dr Helena Wright, Dr Pablo Manzano and Dan Blaustein-Rejto, discuss livestock systems and greenhouse gas emissions. The food system generates around a third of human-made greenhouse gas emissions, with about half of these attributable to animal production; and yet food was markedly absent from official...

Sir Dieter Helm discusses how we could shift to a sustainable economy. What would have to happen for this generation to live within its environmental means and to bequeath to the next generation a set of assets at least as good as it inherited? What would the sustainable economy look like? How do we stop climate change and biodiversity loss? Consumption would have to be on a sustainable growth pat...

Alison Wolf, Ian Stuart and Sir Chris Husbands join Sir Paul Collier to discuss vocational skills and the economy. This country has been worrying about vocational skills since the late 19th century. Since then we have had one government initiative after another, yet employers' complaints about skill shortages have steadily increased. At the same time, the country has continued to grow economically...

This discussion brings together the editors of a special issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy on Capitalism. Rising levels of inequality, social exclusion, environmental degradation and political divisiveness are a of source growing disillusionment with our capitalist system. The OxREP issue includes articles by leading economists from around the world on the problems with the existing sy...

Join Professor Kingsley Moghalu, Oxford Martin Visiting Fellow on the Oxford Martin Programme on African Governance and former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, as he discusses the challenges and opportunities of Nigeria's political economy Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and the continent’s largest economy, is populated by dynamic and talented citizens, but has faced steep c...

Join Ron Emerson, Chairman of Bank North, & Professor Colin Mayer, Lead Researcher on the Oxford Martin Initiative on Regional Levelling-up, as they discuss the above and in what ways does Bank North’s business model address these needs? The UK has the most extreme regional inequalities in the OECD and one of the most centralised governance and financial systems all controlled from London. How...

Dave Smith, Chief Executive of South Yorkshire City-Region Authority and Colin Mayer, Professor of Finance, discuss how South Yorkshire can forge a strategy for change. South Yorkshire, crucible of the Industrial Revolution, was once a proud, prosperous and highly-skilled society. In the 1980s its two major industries collapsed and it is now the poorest region in England. It still has huge assets,...

Dr Alexandra Zimmermann, WildCRU, discusses the challenges of managing conflict between different groups in order to protect wildlife and natural resources The conservation of biodiversity and natural resources is unavoidably about managing conflicts between groups of people. To be able to withstand the additional pressures and impacts from climate change and the pandemic, conservation efforts nee...

Diane Coyle and Ian Goldin discuss Diane's new book 'Cogs and Monsters' and how economics can face the challenges of technological change. Digital technology is disruptive, and it is not sparing economics from that disruption. What are the challenges facing economics and economists in the post-financial crisis, post-pandemic, world as they respond to fundamental structural changes? Digital technol...

Economists Paul Collier and John Kay discuss their book, Greed is Dead, with Sir Charles Godfray Throughout history, successful societies have created institutions which channel both competition and co-operation to achieve complex goals of general benefit. These institutions make the difference between societies that thrive and those paralysed by discord, the difference between prosperous and poor...

Join Nick Eyre and Steve Smith for a discussion on a renewable energy, energy efficiency and carbon emissions. The combustion of fossil fuels is responsible for the most greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in industrialised countries. Systemic change in energy systems is therefore a critical component of any net-zero agenda. It is a huge global challenge, but recent developments give cause for...