Georgina Ferry interviews Max Roser, Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development, 2 September 2022.
Topics discussed include (00:00:33) early interest in economics, including studies in philosophy and geoscience at university in Austria, PhD studies, work in Oxford; (00:03:00) influence of travel on focus on global inequality; (00:04:40) development of Our World in Data website; (00:10:47) different kinds of data collected and origin of data, including data aggregation; (00:12:25) data visualisation, including use of diagrams, graphs, charts and world maps; (00:14:07) main user base during the early days of the website, use of social media to share data; (00:19:20) use of data by policymakers; (00:21:10) framing of data, including world's largest problems and living conditions; (00:24:15) first awareness of COVID-19; (00:25:31) pivot of work towards collection of COVID-19 data by Our World in Data; (00:31:50) particular data collected and published, particularly early World Health Organisation data, work with Hannah Ritchie to transcribe data, Breck Yunits relating to website data presentation, and Daniel Gavrilov who worked on presenting exponential growth; (00:38:30) funding for the work; (00:41:08) collaborative nature of the work; (00:42:40) changes to ways of working, including remote working and onboarding new colleagues; (00:44:25) collaboration with team at the Blavatnik School of Government, work with other data aggregators; (00:50:30) work with journalists, particularly relating to collation of data; (00:52:50) presentation of data relating to vaccinations, creation of global map showing vaccination progress, collaboration with Edouard Mathieu and his work to build tools and improve data; (01:00:30) work with variants and excess deaths, including collaboration with CoVariants.org and Sondre [Ulvunde Solstad] at The Economist; (01:02:00) undercounting by media outlets of excess mortality during the pandemic (01:06:13) collaboration with colleagues at the Blavatnik School of Government; (01:08:35) aggregation of data and its use by policymakers, policy in Germany, development of Pfizer vaccine and vaccine approval and rollout; (01:13:41) the status of data as a result of the pandemic; (01:15:12) science communications and raising understanding of science in the general public; (01:16:53) the International Best Practice Advisory Group, including outputs and impact on policy; (01:19:06) current data work, including ongoing work on COVID-19 and growth of team; (01:21:07) funding for continued project work on Our World in Data; (01:22:20) work on other topics for Our World in Data, including a database on the history of war; (01:31:15) changes in approach to work as a result of the project; (01:34:17) datasets relating to pandemic risk and preparedness.
