The Global Change Data Lab is a charity in the education sector, registered in England and Wales (Charity Number 1186433). Our purpose is to advance education in how global living conditions and the earth’s environment are changing, through the production and maintenance of public online resources and related products.
We are focused on solving five big problems.
- Daily news is not enough to know about the world: we publish data and research to bring attention to large, yet slow transformative processes (e.g. historical reductions in child mortality) that are rarely covered by the media.
- To understand how our world is changing we need statistics: Our mission is to make data about the world available and understandable to give everyone the research to develop a worldview that goes beyond anecdotes and single events.
- Academic research is disconnected from public discourse: Research is often hidden behind paywalls, buried in spreadsheets, and written for a specialist audience only. We explain and disseminate important findings that would otherwise be inaccessible to a general audience.
- Lacking awareness of progress makes us cynical: we show that in many ways living conditions around the world are getting better; communicating this enables people to pursue more of what works and to be motivated to engage with the challenges that we face.
- Professors and teachers need understandable, free, and up-to-date teaching material on global development: The price of textbooks is often prohibitively high and especially in developing countries educators lack relevant material. We prepare our work to be used as teaching material by everyone without restriction.
Projects
Our World in Data
Our World in Data is a website that shows how global living conditions and the earth’s environment are changing. The publication is a collaborative effort between the researchers of the Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development at the University of Oxford, who are the scientific editors of the website content; and the non-profit organization Global Change Data Lab, who publishes and maintains the website.
Sustainable Development Goals Tracker
Our SDG Tracker presents data across all available indicators from the Our World in Data database, using official statistics from the UN and other international organizations. It is the first publication that tracks global progress towards the SDGs.
Global Change Teaching Hub
On the Global Change Teaching Hub professors and students find notes, presentation slides, and charts for teaching and learning about global development.
Other projects
We have a number of smaller projects such as Africa in Data, a tool to standardize country names in international statistics, and regularly partner with media organizations to provide data and research on global change.
Board of Trustees
Sir David Hendry. Professor of Economics, and former Head of Department of Economics, University of Oxford, UK.
Professor Wendy Carlin. Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University College London, UK.
Professor Stefano Caria. Assistant Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Bristol, UK
Executive Directors
Dr. Max Roser. Senior Research Fellow, Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, UK.
Dr. Esteban Ortiz-Ospina. Research Fellow, Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, UK.