Recent research published by the University of Bath found that 56% of young people think that humanity is doomed. In our February xChange we’ll therefore ask Ian Goldin ‘Can we rescue humanity?’. Professor Goldin is a former Vice President of the World Bank, former advisor to President Nelson Mandela, founding director of the Oxford Martin School and author of Rescue: From Global Crisis to a Better World. Arunjay Katakam, founder of Inclusive Action Lab, and Paul Skinner, founder of MarketingKind, will interview him to explore what we can collectively do to ‘rescue humanity’ and create a better world.

Ian Goldin is Professor of Globalisation and Development at the University of Oxford, the Director of the Oxford Martin Programmes on Technological and Economic Change, Future of Work and Future of Development and founding Director of the Oxford Martin School. From 1996 to 2001, he was chief executive of the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) and served as an adviser to President Nelson Mandela. From 2001 to 2006 Ian was Vice President of the World Bank and the Group’s Director of Policy. Previously, Ian served as Principal Economist at the EBRD and the Director of the Trade and Sustainable Growth Programmes at the OECD Development Centre. He has been knighted by the French Government and selected as Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. He has published over 60 journal articles and 23 books, most recently Rescue: From Global Crisis to a Better World. Previous books include Terra Incognita:100 Maps to Survive the Next 100 Years; Age of Discovery: Navigating the Storms of Our Second Renaissance and The Butterfly Defect: Why Globalization Creates Systemic Risks and What to Do, in which he predicted that a pandemic was the most likely cause of the next financial crisis. Other books include Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped Our World and Will Define Our Future; Development: A Very Short Introduction; and Is the Planet Full?. He has authored and presented three BBC Documentary Series After The Crash; Will AI Kill Development? and The Pandemic that Changed the World. He has been interviewed on BBCHardTalk and is a frequent contributor to leading global media outlets. He lectures at Oxford, Tsinghua and Harvard and provides advisory and consultancy services to the IMF, UN, EU, OECD and numerous governments and businesses. He is Chair of the core-econ.org initiative to transform economics, and is an honorary trustee of Comic Relief and other charities.