Oxford Martin School: Public Lectures and Seminars

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 constant flow of refugees? How far is Africa a victim of its past, and is there a new financial colonialism holding it back? What can the rest of the world do to help Africa to grow and prosper in peace?

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 possibly even endanger the human race. Kasparov will consider the possibilities, limitations and risks of this ever-changing field of potential, looking at a wide range of developments, from nano-sensors to the prospect of artificial intelligence. He will also address the issues surrounding data and privacy, offering his perspective on whether potential breakthroughs and advantages are worth the risk to privacy. He will examine the opposing views of those who fear the risks and those who seem only to embrace the upside of new generations of technology. In what promises to be a lively and wide-ranging talk, Garry Kasparov brings his unique perspective to a set of issues that are hotly debated and constantly in the headlines

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 journey, the Rosetta spacecraft's lander Philae touched down on the surface of the comet 67P, also known as Churyumov–Gerasimenko. The robotic European Space Agency lander not only took images from the comet’s surface, the first images in history, but obtained data that was sent back to be analysed. This data will be used to determine the composition of the surface of the comet. But what does this mean? And what implications does it have?

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 waste products of our activity being the main driver of climate change. How can we measure how “large” we are, and how has our impact on the planet varied throughout human history?

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 simple matter of scale. Over the past few years experimentalists have seen quantum effects in a growing number of macroscopic systems. The quintessential quantum effect, entanglement, can even occur in large systems as well as warm ones - including living organisms - even though molecular jiggling might be expected to disrupt entanglement.

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 high efficienty arises from the interplay between coherence, decoherence, and static disorder

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 demonstrate the extent to which women are still deemed second-class citizens in many countries and cultures.

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 financial corporations, once again, institutions that are useful to society? Professor Vines, Director of Ethics and Economics at INET Oxford, will provide some answers to these questions in his talk, and will provide particular examples of what needs to be done.

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, he and co-author Mike Mariathasan, Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Vienna, argue that the recent financial crisis is an example of the risks that the world will face in the coming decades. The risks spread across supply chains, pandemics, infrastructure, ecology, climate change, economics and politics. Unless these risks are addressed, says Goldin, they could lead to greater protectionism, xenophobia, nationalism and to deglobalisation, rising conflict and slower growth.