Events

25th November 2025: 12:30pm   Registration Required
Oxford Martin School & Online

The Mekong Delta, Vietnam's "rice bowl" and a globally significant biodiversity hotspot, is on the front line of climate change.

18th November 2025: 5:00pm   Registration Required   Live Stream
Oxford Martin School & Online

In this Pandemic Sciences Institute & Oxford Martin School talk, Professor Drake will trace the historical record of major 20th and 21st Century pandemics, highlighting how global forces such as economic integration, urbanisation and climate disruption shape the emergence and spread of novel pathogens.

12th November 2025: 5:00pm   Registration Required   Live Stream
The Sheldonian Theatre and Online

We welcome the Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Lord Hague, who will give this year's James Martin Memorial Lecture on the occasion of the School's 20th anniversary.

10th November 2025: 5:00pm   Registration Required   Live Stream
Oxford Martin School & Online

Join us for a roundtable discussion with Professor Amitav Acharya, Professor Faisal Devji, and Professor Andrew Hurrell, chaired by Professor Louise Fawcett.

6th November 2025: 5:00pm   Registration Required   Live Stream
Oxford Martin School & Online

In his new book 'Portals to a New Reality', Prof Vlatko Vedral argues that we are on the brink of a new revolution in physics. In this talk, he will describe a number of key thought experiments that test the foundations of physics, namely the interface between quantum physics and general relativity.

5th November 2025: 5:00pm   Registration Required   Live Stream
Oxford Martin School & Online

With the impacts of climate change becoming ever more evident and challenging – can we “transition away from fossil fuels”, and create a new energy system which meets the many and divergent needs of the global population?

30th October 2025: 5:00pm   Registration Required   Live Stream
Oxford Martin School & Online

Join Professor Dame Henrietta L. Moore and Arthur Kay for a provocative discussion on how our dependence on cars has shaped not only our cities and infrastructure, but our economies, health, and freedoms. Based on the ideas explored in their new work, this talk will interrogate the hidden costs of car-centric development and propose bold, systems-level alternatives to rethink how we move, live, and thrive in a climate-constrained world.

22nd October 2025: 5:00pm   Registration Required   Live Stream
Oxford Martin School & Online

The two fastest-growing global uses of food crops are their conversion into biofuels and their use as livestock feeds. These trends are accelerating the risks of species extinctions, of agriculturally-driven climate change, and of agricultural water and air pollution. Biofuel production from food crops also directly decreases the availability of food for the world’s 700 million malnourished people, and may cause further harm to the world’s poor by impacting food prices.

15th October 2025: 5:00pm   Registration Required   Live Stream
Oxford Martin School & Online

In How Progress Ends, Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable. For most of human history, stagnation was the norm, and even today progress and prosperity in the world’s largest, most advanced economies—the United States and China—have fallen short of expectations. To appreciate why we cannot depend on any AI-fueled great leap forward, Frey offers a remarkable and fascinating journey across the globe, spanning the past 1,000 years, to explain why some societies flourish and others fail in the wake of rapid technological change.

1st October 2025: 5:00pm   Registration Required   Live Stream
Oxford Martin School & Online

Increased prevalence of obesity isn't due to a lack of willpower - body weight is biologically regulated in ways that make it difficult to lose weight and keep it off.

16th June 2025: 5:00pm   Registration Required   Live Stream
Oxford Martin School & Online

In recent years, and certainly since the launch of ChatGPT, there has been massive public and professional interest in Artificial Intelligence. But people are confused about what AI is, what it can and cannot do, what is yet to come, and whether AI is good or bad for humanity and civilisation - whether it will provide solutions to mankind's major challenges or become our gravest existential threat. There is also confusion about how we should regulate AI and where we should draw moral boundaries on its use.

16th June 2025: 12:30pm   Registration Required   Live Stream
Oxford Martin School & Online

The Tony Blair Institute of Global Change recently published an article asserting that reducing emissions was difficult and would fail unless we expanded use of technologies that are expensive and a challenge to living standards. This is reminiscent of nineteenth century economist William Stanley Jevons’ in “The Coal Question”, warning of the limits that finite coal resources placed on British prosperity. The hole in both visions is the absence of international trade.

12th June 2025: 5:00pm   Registration Required   Live Stream
Oxford Martin School & Online

The illusions that have long defined Africa-Europe relations are not just outdated—they are, Professor Carlos Lopes argues, actively harmful. As Africa repositions itself within a rapidly changing global order, clinging to legacy narratives only deepens inequality and missed opportunities.

11th June 2025: 12:30pm   Registration Required   Live Stream
Oxford Martin School & Online

Artificial intelligence technologies have the potential to lead to substantial economic growth and prosperity. To achieve these objectives, we need to ensure the larger-scale adoption and diffusion of these technologies in a way that maximises their economic value for corporations, consumers and the industrial production.

27th May 2025: 5:00pm   Registration Required   Live Stream
Oxford Martin School & Online

Conservation in the Pacific Islands faces unique challenges, requiring approaches that acknowledge the deep interconnectedness of communities and their environments. Traditional conservation methods have sometimes overlooked unique socio-cultural contexts including the rights, needs and aspirations of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, leading to unintended negative consequences.

19th May 2025: 5:00pm   Registration Required   Live Stream
Oxford Martin School & Online

How do we move from tracking disease emergence to predicting the next epidemic?