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Our World in Data

Our World in Data is a British data visualization project based in the United Kingdom.

Our World in Data notes that it has four main sources of research it uses for publication: “specialized institutes” such as the Peace Research Institute Oslo, research articles, international institutions like the World Bank, and “official data from government sources.”1)

History

Our World in Data began as compiled research notes written by Global Change Data Lab founder Max Roser in 2011. Roser originally aimed to write a book on international issues before deciding to create a website.2)

Roser created the first version of Our World in Data in 2013 and applied for a research grant from the London-based Nuffield Foundation, which initially rejected the application but accepted a renewed application in 2014 and provided OWID with a grant of £75,883 (approximately $90,318).

In 2018, OWID successfully applied to startup incubator Y Combinator, becoming part of the YC Winter 2019 batch of startups.3)

COVID-19

The organization began the COVID-19 pandemic with six staff members, and grew to 20 by late 2021.4) 5)

Organization

OWID is a project of the Global Change Data Lab (GCDL) and is hosted at the University of Oxford.6)

Personnel

Our World in Data - Team7)
Name Position Notes
Max Roser Founder and Director Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development, Global Change Data Lab
Natasha Ahuja Executive Assistant to Dr. Max Roser Joined in 2022
Pablo Arriagada Data Scientist Joined in 2022
Daniel Bachler Principal Software Engineer Joined in 2021
Matthieu Bergel Senior Software Engineer Joined in 2019
Marwa Boukarim Designer Frog Milan
Matthew Conlen Head of Product and Design New York Times, CNN, FiveThirtyEight
Jason Crawford Software Team Lead (Part-time Advisor) Fieldbook, Amazon, Flexport
Saloni Dattani Researcher (Part-time) University of Hong Kong, King’s College London
Marcel Gerber Software Engineer (Part-time) Joined in 2020
Charlie Giattino Researcher Centre for the Governance of AI, Future of Humanity Institute, AI Impacts
Joe Hasell Product Manager University of Oxford
Bastian Herre Researcher Joined in 2021
Bobbie Macdonald Senior Data Scientist (Part-time) Joined in 2020
Edouard Mathieu Head of Data and Research University of Oxford
Sophia Mersmann Data Visualization Engineer Grapher, rbb24
Esteban Ortiz-Ospina Head of Strategy and Operations Global Change Data Lab, University of Oxford
Natalie Reynolds-Garcia Operations and Administration Officer Rees Centre
Hannah Ritchie Deputy Editor and Science Outreach Lead Joined in 2017
Lucas Rodés-Guirao Senior Data Scientist National Institute of Informatics
Valerie Rogers Muigai Operations and Finance Manager Kijani Uganda
Pablo Rosado Principal Data Scientist Max Planck Society, Data Science for Social Good, European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO)
Ike Saunders Full Stack Engineer Joined in 2022
Mallika Snyder Researcher (Part-time) University of California Berkeley
Fiona Spooner Senior Data Scientist University of Exeter, Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), Imperial College London
Christian Swinehart Senior Data Visualization Engineer Pentagram, Bloomberg, New York Times, Columbia University, Pratt Institute
Mojmir Vinkler Data Engineer Joined in 2022
Lars Yencken Head of Engineering Grace Health, Lifesum
Former Team Members8)
Shahid Ahmad Software Engineer Jasmine
Aibek Aldabergenov Web Developer -
Cameron Appel Data Analyst 2019-2022
Hannah Behrens Contributor University of Oxford
Diana Beltekian Research Assistant 2017
Sonya Bhatt Administrative and Finance Officer 2018
Anstey Brock Research Assistant 2018
Daniel Gavrilov Software Engineer 2018-2022
Zdenek Hynek Web Developer 2015
Lindsay Lee Research Assistant 2015
Nicolas Lippolis Contributor Centre for the Study of African Economies
Jaiden Mispy Web Developer 2016-2019
Ruby Mittal Research Assistant -
Marco Molteni Research Assistant 2017
Julia Murphy Research Assistant 2015
Mohamed Nagdy Research Assistant 2015
Brian Nolan Contributor University of Oxford
Sophie Ochmann Research Assistant 2017-2018
Stefan Thewissen Contributor University of Oxford
Sandra Tzvetkova Researcher and Editor -
Ernst-jan Van Woerden Head of Product Design 2020
Samantha Vanderslott Contributor Oxford Vaccine Group, Oxford Martin School
Breck Yunits Software Engineer 2020

Funding

2)
Rosen, M. (2019). History of Our World in Data. Our World in Data. http://archive.today/2020.05.25-112014/https://ourworldindata.org/history-of-our-world-in-data
3)
Roser, M., Ritchie, H., Ortiz-Ospina, E., Mispy, J., Hasell, J., & Gavrilov, D. (2019, January 25). Our World in Data is at Y Combinator. Our World in Data. http://archive.today/2019.02.07-182753/https://ourworldindata.org/owid-at-ycombinator
4)
Wiblin, R., & Harris, K. (2021, June 21). Max Roser on building the world’s first great source of COVID-19 data at Our World in Data. 80,000 Hours. https://web.archive.org/web/20230128131614/https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/max-roser-our-world-in-data/
5) , 7)
Our Team. Our World in Data. Retrieved March 17, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20230317214612/https://ourworldindata.org/team
6) , 10)
How We’re Funded. Our World in Data. Retrieved March 18, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20230318074043/https://ourworldindata.org/funding
8)
Former Team Members and Contributors. Our World in Data. Retrieved March 18, 2023, from http://archive.today/2023.03.18-183222/https://ourworldindata.org/former-team-members
9)
How We’re Funded. Our World in Data. Retrieved June 30, 2022, from http://archive.today/2022.06.30-112344/https://ourworldindata.org/funding
12)
Kahn, J. (2022, November 15). Is the collapse of Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto empire the end of Effective Altruism? Fortune. https://archive.ph/zK2G1
13)
Our world in data. Nuffield Foundation. Retrieved March 18, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20230318164858/https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/project/our-world-in-data
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