Professor Ian Goldin, University of Oxford, is the founding director of the Oxford Martin School. Professor Goldin is the director of the Oxford Martin Research Programmes on Technological and Economic Change Future of Work and Future of Development. He is also Professor of globalisation and development and holds a professorial fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford. Professor Goldin was director of development policy at the World Bank (2001–2003) and then vice president of the World Bank (2003–2006).
Senior Fellow of the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford. He also serves as Chair of the Hamburg Sustainability Conference. A Brazilian-German National, he completed his two terms as UN Under-Secretary General and Administrator of the United Nations Development Group (2017–2025) and vice-chair of United Nations Sustainable Development Group in June 2025. Before joining UNDP, he was Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme UNEP (2006–2016), and Director/Professorial Fellow of the Oxford Martin School (2016–2017). He has also served as Director General of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Secretary General of the World Commission on Dams.
Leading biographer Jenny Uglow (whose subject Edward Lear spent considerable time on Corfu documenting its natural assets) is an English biographer, historian, critic and publisher; formerly editorial director at Chatto & Windus. In addition to Edward Lear she has written critically acclaimed biographies of Elizabeth Gaskell, William Hogarth and Thomas Bewick and a history of the Lunar Society. She has chaired the Council of the Royal Society of Literature.
Professor Dimitri Vayanos is Professor of Finance at the London School of Economics and co-author of the Pissarides report on Greek economic growth. He is Director of the Paul Woolley Centre for the Study of Capital Market Dysfunctionality, a Fellow of the British Academy and numbers environmental protection in Greece amongst his research interests.
Professor Sir Drummond Bone was previously both Pro Vice-Chancellor at the University of Oxford and Master of Balliol College. He is a former Chair of the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Funding Council, President of Universities UK and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool. A prominent Byron Scholar he is currently Chair of the National Library of Scotland and the Wordsworth Society.
Dr Lee Durrell MBE (widow of the late Gerald Durrell, whose ‘My Family and Other Animals’ celebrated the nature, wildlife and way of life of Corfu so memorably). Lee Durrell is an American naturalist, author and television presenter, co-author of numerous books with her late husband and honorary Director of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust.
Professor of Ethnopharmacology and Pharmacognosy, Yusahn Fellow at China Medical University, Taiwan (https://yushan.project.edu.tw/TopTalent/EN/Intro#section1). Michael currently serves as the President of the Society for Medicinal Plant and Natural Product Research (GA see https://ga-online.org/), the global forum for these disciplines. He has led or participated in international research collaborations in Mexico, Guatemala, Taiwan, Thailand, Cyprus, and many other regions.
Matthew Lodge became Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the Hellenic Republic, Greece in September 2021. Matthew was commissioned as an officer in the Royal Marines serving subsequent duties in Norway and the United States. Matthew joined the Foreign and Commonwealth office in 1996 and has previously been Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Finland and Kuwait.
