A user guide to the future

David is Professor of History and Director of the Big History Institute at Macquarie University in Sydney. By training as an historian of Russia and the Soviet Union, he has become interested in world history on a very large scale, or “Big History,” since the 1980s. He taught at Macquarie University from 1975 to 2000, then at San Diego State University, before returning to Macquarie in 2009. He was founding president of the International Big History Association and co-founder, with Bill Gates, of the Big History Project. He is the author of Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History, among many other books and articles. He holds a PhD from Oxford University.

Stephen is chairman of the Prix Pictet, consultant to the Pictet Group and former Group Head of Communications. He has recently completed the book, La Maison: the Origins and Evolution of the Pictet Group. He is a managing trustee of the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation and a trustee and board member of the International Tree Foundation. He is also chairman of the Hendrik teNeues Foundation and a member of the advisory board of the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust. He began his career as an investment manager with Samuel Montagu & Co., Ltd, the now extinct British merchant bank. He graduated from St. John's College, Oxford with a double honours degree (MA) in Mathematics & Philosophy.