Oxford Martin School: Public Lectures and Seminars

The President of the Rockefeller Foundation discusses the need for new solutions for energy transformation and economic development. We cannot end poverty without ending energy poverty. Ever since the world’s first power plants whirred to life in 1882, we have seen how electricity is the lynchpin for development in all of its forms. Manufacturing and industrial productivity, agriculture and food s...

Prof Beinhocker will argue that by changing the ideologies, narratives, and memes that govern our economic system, we can create the political space required to rapidly transform to a sustainable and just economic system. The biosphere and econosphere are deeply interlinked and both are in crisis. Industrial, fossil-fuel based capitalism delivered major increases in living standards from the mid-1...

Professor Sir Paul Collier and Professor Colin Mayer CBE will share the latest thinking and research into the future of capitalism and the corporation to understand how business might be changed to make it work better for society. The speakers will bring together their new books, The Future of Capitalism: Facing The New Anxieties and Prosperity: Better Business Makes the Greater Good, alongside th...

Nick Eyre and Myles Allen give a talk for the Oxford Martin School on climate change and the IPCC report. One of the key objectives of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), completed in 2014, was to provide a comprehensive description of the science of climate change and options for adaptation and mitigation for negotiators preparing for the Paris Con...

Dr Nathalie Seddon, Director of the Biodiversity Institute, gives a talk for the Oxford Martin School. The future of biodiversity conservation is under increasing threat from both climate change and human impact. Dr Nathalie Seddon, Director of the Biodiversity Institute, will look at how rapid growth of climate change affects our ecosystems, how species’ will be forced to adapt to survive, and ho...

Sir John Beddington, Senior Adviser at the Oxford Martin School, gives a talk on climate change Some five years ago Sir John Beddington, Senior Adviser at the Oxford Martin School, raised the concept of 'The Perfect Storm' in which the issues of food, water and energy security needed to be addressed at the same time as mitigating and adapting to climate change. In this seminar he highlights change...

Professor Gideon Henderson, Professor of Earth Sciences, and Professor David Marshall, Professor of Physical Oceanography, will explore the role of oceans in climate change. How are oceans affected by our rapidly changing climate? What can they tell us about the processes controlling climate change? And what role do they play in driving climate?

In this seminar Dr Rob Bellamy, James Martin Fellow at the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, will explore how and why people disagree about how to tackle climate change. What hope then is there for a global political agreement in Paris 2015?

In this talk Professor Tim Palmer CBE, Co-Director of the Programme on Modelling and Predicting Climate, gives a talk for the Oxford Martin School. Tim Palmer will address three related questions. Firstly, what are the physical reasons why predictions of climate change are necessarily uncertain? Secondly, how can we communicate this uncertainty in a simple but rigorous way to those policy makers f...

John Kampfner and Katrine Marçal discuss the growing gap between rich and poor and its implications for society, chaired by Professor Ian Goldin. This roundtable is part of the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival 2015, the Oxford Martin School is the Festival Ideas Partner Is it morally justified to allow the creation of a 'super rich' that leave the rest behind? Is the growing gap between rich an...

Three authors with recent books on Africa discuss the future of the continent and answer questions from the audience under the watchful eye of the director of the Oxford Martin School, Professor Ian Goldin. Martin Meredith, Jonny Steinberg and Tom Burgis will discuss what the future holds for African states. How can the continent deal with failing government and corruption and with war and a const...

In this new Oxford talk, Garry Kasparov, Senior Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Martin School, turns his attention to the rapidly evolving relationship between humans and technology. In this new talk, Garry Kasparov turns his attention to the rapidly evolving relationship between humans and technology. He will explore the impact of technology on human development – how it can enhance, limit or possi...

Professor Chris Lintott, Professor of Astrophysics, University of Oxford and presenter of the BBC’s Sky at Night will talk about the history and the science of the voyage. Professor Ian Goldin, Director, Oxford Martin School and Chris will discuss the implications and politics of Europe’s mission to study a comet that is three hundred million miles away. On 12th November 2014, after a 10 year jour...

Yadvinder Malhi, Director of the Oxford Centre ofr Tropical Forests, gives a talk for the Oxford Martin School. We live in a new epoch, the Anthropocene, the Age of Us, of which climate change is just one aspect. The defining feature of this age is that sum of human activity (how many we are and what we are doing) has become large compared to the natural processes of the biosphere. The atmospheric...

Vlatko Vedral, Co-=Direct oof the Oxford Martin Programme on Bio-Inspired Quantum Technologies, gives a talk for theOxford Martin School. Quantum mechanics is commonly said to be a theory of microscopic things: molecules, atoms, subatomic particles. Nearly all physicists, though, think it applies to everything, no matter what the size. The reason its distinctive features tend to be hidden is not a...

Professor Seth Lloyd, Principal Investigator in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) gives a talk for the Oxford Martin School. Over the past decade, experimental evidence has accumulated that photosynthetic organisms are using quantum mechanics in a sophisticated fashion to attain high energy transport efficiency. This talk shows how this...

Baroness Helena Kennedy QC gives a talk for the Oxford Martin School on women's rights. The past century has seen huge progress in women's rights, but inequality persists globally. Recent high-profile incidents of violence against women in India, continuing severe restrictions on the personal and working lives of women in Saudi Arabia, draconian punishments and the practice of genital mutilation d...

Professor David Vines gives a talk onthe financial system. Financial firms were once organisations which helped their clients to do well, and earned fees from doing so. They have become organisations which look for people from whom to make money. As a result, people who work in finance are now very different from doctors; and they are no longer trusted. How did this happen? What can we do to make...

David Clifton, Institute of Biomedical Engineering, gives a talk for Oxford Martin School.

Professor Ian Goldin gives a talk on globalization and systemic risk. Globalisation has brought us vast benefits including growth in incomes, education, innovation and connectivity. Professor Ian Goldin, Director of the Oxford Martin School, argues that it also has the potential to destabilise our societies. In The Butterfly Defect: How globalisation creates systemic risks, and what to do about it...

Charles Godfray, Ian Goldin, Sarah Harper, Toby Ord and Yadvinder Malhi discuss whether the planet is full. The panel will discuss the whether our planet can continue to support a growing population estimated to reach 10 billion people by the middle of the century?

Mike Rayner, Susan Jebb and Tara Garnett give a talk about food and feeding the population. Non-fat, low-fat, saturated fat, trans fats, healthy fats - in an era where we seem to be constantly bombarded with often conflicting messages about our diets, is all this information actually making us any healthier? How can we cut through media hysteria and make wise choices about the food we eat, and wha...

Andrew Dilnot, David Coleman, Francesco Billari, Sarah Harper and Wolfgang Lutz give a talk about world population. The future of global development as well as the end of world population growth in the 21st century will crucially depend on further progress in education, particularly of girls. Almost universally, better educated women have fewer children, have healthier children and are in better h...

Dr John Frater, Principal Investigator, Institute for Emerging Infections and Dr Ellie Barnes, Principal Investigator, Institute for Emerging Infections.

Professor Terry Dwyer, Executive Director, The George Institute for Global Health and Dr Kazem Rahimi, Deputy Director, The George Institute for Global Health.