Dr Max Roser

Director, Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development

Max leads the Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development. He and his team focus their research on large global problems, including poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, existential risks, and war.

He is the Professor of Practice in Global Data Analytics at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government.

Max is also the founder and director of Our World in Data. This award-winning online publication, which he started building in 2011, presents data and research on the world’s largest problems. It is produced as a public good, all work is freely available to allow everyone to understand global problems and how to make progress against them. In addition to Our World in Data, he also built the SDG-Tracker and the Chartbook of Economic Inequality.

In peer-reviewed publications, he studied global poverty, economic inequality, child deaths, global health, and climate change. During the COVID pandemic, he and his team built the global databases on vaccinations and tests and built visualization tools to make the world’s pandemic data accessible to everyone. Throughout the pandemic, this data was relied upon by the media and governments around the world and essentially all international organizations.

His work has significantly influenced public understanding and policy discussions by being widely used by international organizations, governments, universities, and the media. Millions of people visit Our World in Data every month, and his work is cited several thousand times every year in academic publications. Media outlets around the world, including The BBC, The Guardian, The Economist, and The New York Times, cite Our World in Data frequently.

He also regularly advises decision-makers: Throughout his career, he has served in various advisory capacities with a range of organizations, including the UNDP's Statistical Advisory Panel, the UK Government (on health, education, and technology), and the World Bank.

Prospect Magazine listed him as one of the World’s Top 50 Thinkers. Vox included him in their ‘Future Perfect 50’-list of thinkers who are “building a better future”.

Max has a BSc in geoscience, a BA and an MA in philosophy, an MSc in economics, and a doctorate from the University of Innsbruck, Austria. He is originally from Kirchheimbolanden, Germany.