Four New Honorary Fellows Elected in 2020

The College’s Governing Body elected four new Honorary Fellows during 2020, in recognition of their distinguished contribution to their own field.  We warmly welcome them all and look forward to their continued engagement with Pembroke in the future.

Dame Lynne Brindley was Master of Pembroke from 2013 to 2020, the first woman to lead the College in its almost 400 year history.  She previously held roles at a number of other British universities, including Aston, LSE, and the University of Leeds, where she was Pro-Vice Chancellor. From 2000 to 2012 Dame Lynne served as Chief Executive of the British Library.  In 2008 she was awarded a DBE for services to education, and in 2015 was elected to an Honorary Fellowship of The British Academy. Dame Lynne’s many other appointments have included membership of the Board of the national media regulator Ofcom and of the Court of Wardens of The Goldsmiths’ Company. 

Professor Helen Moore (1989, English Language and Literature) is President of Corpus Christi College Oxford.  Having taught at Corpus since 1996, she was elected President in 2018 and is the first woman to hold the post in the College’s 500 year history.  Professor Moore’s research and teaching interests interrogate the boundaries of cultures, periods and disciplines across the medieval and early modern periods of history. Her interdisciplinary research has been outstanding for its revival of interest in long-neglected works, notably the sixteenth-century prose romance Amadis de Gaule, and the seventeenth-century play Guy of Warwick.

Professor Helen Small is the current holder of the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature at Oxford.  This distinguished post dates back to 1885 and JRR Tolkien is among Professor Small’s five predecessors.  Before taking up the Professorship, Helen was the Jonathan and Julia Aisbitt Fellow in English Literature at Pembroke from 1996 to 2018.  Her commitment to College life included serving as Vicegerent from 2014 to 2016.  Helen’s distinguished career in literature has seen her win the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism (for The Long Life, 2007), as well as receiving widespread acclaim for her 2013 book The Value of the Humanities.  She was elected to a Fellowship of the British Academy in 2018.

Professor Chris Whitty (1985, Physiological Sciences) is Chief Medical Officer for England, the UK Government’s Chief Medical Adviser and Chief Scientific Adviser for the Department of Health and Social Care.  His academic career has seen him elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Gresham Professor of Physic.  Professor Whitty’s distinguished research in epidemiology has spanned the UK, Africa and Asia, and has led to a succession of eminent public health appointments, including Professor of Public and International Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for International Development.