Global Future Challenges Blog

Globalization: The good, the bad and the uncertain

Posted on: 01 Feb 2012 in Opinions

This blog, written by Professor Ian Goldin, first appeared in The Globalist (1 Feb, 2012) When over 2000 world leaders of government, business and academia descended on Davos last month, discussions were dominated by the global economic... Read More »

Hillerbrand and Taylor: Beyond Risk as a Totalizing Metric

Posted on: 04 Mar 2008 in Events

The seminar on “Risk and political Culture” by Professor Steve Rayner fell into two parts:  He first gave an overview over major research lines within the social science of risk and then, in the second part, argued that risk cast in... Read More »

Hillerbrand and Taylor: Managing Biblical Disasters through Science and Behaviour

Posted on: 04 Mar 2008 in Events

The final talk in our Thursday seminar series brought the issues of risk into sharp focus looking at real life problems faced by the UK government.  Our speaker was Helen Ghosh, who since 2005 has been Permanent Secretary for the Department for... Read More »

Hillerbrand and Taylor: It's only a question of how severe the problems will be

Posted on: 18 Feb 2008 in Events

Professor Sir David King, former Chief Scientific Advisor of the UK Government and the newly appointed head of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, gave his seminar on environmental challenges in the 21st Century. From his unique... Read More »

Hillerbrand and Taylor: Emotions and Risk Assessment

Posted on: 11 Feb 2008 in Events

It seems almost platitudinous to say that emotions and feelings are irrational and need to be corrected by reason.  This view is also reflected in studies about risk perception.  Quite contrary to this, Professor Sabine Roeser’s talk... Read More »

Hillerbrand: A world of old people or a world where people live longer?

Posted on: 04 Feb 2008 in Events

In her talk entitled "Youth - a scarce commodity in an ageing world?", Professor Sarah Harper assessed the risks of an ageing society. While the first part of her talk focused on the relevant facts, the second part focused on the individua... Read More »

Hillerbrand and Taylor: On Lenny Smith's "Model Error, Real World Risk"

Posted on: 25 Jan 2008 in Events

Professor Lenny Smith's presentation was entitled: "Model Error, Real World Risk: Probabilistic Pathways but Probably not Probabilities". The meaning of this riddle of a title became clear very quickly in his talk on 24 January.  ... Read More »

Hillerbrand and Taylor: On Didier Sornette's "Endogenous and Exogenous Risk"

Posted on: 21 Jan 2008 in Events

The aim of this note is to summarise the key points from the talk by Didier Sornette (ETH, Zurich) on Endogenous and Exogenous risk on 17th January 2008 in the James Martin School seminar series. Sornette addressed the central question of how we... Read More »

Hillerbrand & Taylor: "What is Risk?"

Posted on: 17 Jan 2008 in Events

Our seminar series is about risks in the 21st Century, yet there are many different meanings and uses made of the word “risk”.  Due to the importance of risk in modern societies, it is the subject of many fields.  Psychological... Read More »