About
UNU-WIDER founder Amartya Sen gives the WIDER Annual Lecture in 2015

The 2015 WIDER Annual Lecture will be given by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. He will discuss the overall challenge of sustainable and human-focused development including new and old challenges.

Each year, the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) hosts the WIDER Annual Lecture. It is delivered by an eminent scholar or policy maker who has made a significant contribution in the field of development economics and transition.

This year the lecture will be given by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, a leading international economist and philosopher.

He will discuss the overall challenge of sustainable and injustice-reducing development which includes new problems as well as old adversities. Much progress has been made on the old issues of poverty and inequality, but there remains much to be done. Sen will discuss how these issues are complicated by the rise of two new concerns; climate change and increasing global insecurity.

Speaker

Amartya Sen is a Nobel laureate economist who has made deep and lasting contributions to the academic disciplines of economics, philosophy, and more broadly, the social sciences. Sen has worked over the years on social choice theory, welfare economics, theory of justice, and the demands of rationality. He is also much known for his work on the causes of famine—which led to the development of practical solutions for preventing or limiting the effects of real or perceived shortages of food.

Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University, and was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, until 2004. Professor Sen has served as the President of the Econometric Society, the American Economic Association, the Indian Economic Association, and the International Economic Association.

In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory.

Invitation