Pembroke College Oxford Alumni Conversation in Kuala Lumpur
UPCOMING EVENT | 28 October 2026 18:30 - 28 October 2026 20:00
Alumni Ambassadors, Eddie Leung (2016) and Jo Yan Lim (2000), are delighted to invite you to a Pembroke College Oxford Alumni Conversation with Marshall Madow (2016) on Wednesday 28 October at 6.30pm at Lim Jo Yan & Co, 50470 Kuala Lumpur.
If you are able to join the event, please email Eddie using the link above to register your place.
About This Talk
Join fellow alumnus Marshall Madow for a talk on how the critical thinking skills and academic training he gained at Oxford and Cambridge helped prepare the journey that followed, through further historical study and into an ongoing intellectual history project: a podcast and research project titled Notions of Progress. Marshall briefly discusses the show's central observation — that there are often multiple competing notions of progress, that extend beyond books or lecture halls, finding their way instead into universities, think tanks, and policies that govern people's lives. The talk then shines a brief spotlight on a contemporary case study: a slice of Malaysia's own progress narrative beginning in 1991, tracing a declared national ambition into the country's present balancing act between two competing global powers. Marshall closes not with a hypothesis or verdict on Malaysia, nor on progress itself, but with an invitation to discuss these ideas further together.
About Marshall
Marshall Madow is an independent researcher and the host and scholar-curator of Notions of Progress. His MA in History from Cambridge University — where his thesis examined Georges Sorel's epistemology of myth and the role of ideas in animating collective action — gave him a grounding in how belief systems about progress function as historical forces. His MSc from Oxford's Saïd Business School, specializing in Complexity Science and Leadership, introduced him to the same question from the opposite direction: how systems evolve and change propagates through institutions. Notions of Progress is the inquiry that connects the two.
About the Show
Notions of Progress is a podcast tracing how the idea of progress has been understood,
contested, and reimagined historically — from antiquity to the age of artificial intelligence.
Rather than prescribing a position, the show surfaces the debates, drawing on thinkers from Plato to contemporary scholars of technology and complexity, and approaches its subject as a curator and researcher: seeking a pluralistic, wide-ranging spectrum of ideas rather than advocating one over another.
Pembroke College Oxford Alumni Conversation in Kuala Lumpur
UPCOMING EVENT | 28 October 2026 18:30 - 28 October 2026 20:00
Alumni Ambassadors, Eddie Leung (2016) and Jo Yan Lim (2000), are delighted to invite you to a Pembroke College Oxford Alumni Conversation with Marshall Madow (2016) on Wednesday 28 October at 6.30pm at Lim Jo Yan & Co, 50470 Kuala Lumpur.
If you are able to join the event, please email Eddie using the link above to register your place.
About This Talk
Join fellow alumnus Marshall Madow for a talk on how the critical thinking skills and academic training he gained at Oxford and Cambridge helped prepare the journey that followed, through further historical study and into an ongoing intellectual history project: a podcast and research project titled Notions of Progress. Marshall briefly discusses the show's central observation — that there are often multiple competing notions of progress, that extend beyond books or lecture halls, finding their way instead into universities, think tanks, and policies that govern people's lives. The talk then shines a brief spotlight on a contemporary case study: a slice of Malaysia's own progress narrative beginning in 1991, tracing a declared national ambition into the country's present balancing act between two competing global powers. Marshall closes not with a hypothesis or verdict on Malaysia, nor on progress itself, but with an invitation to discuss these ideas further together.
About Marshall
Marshall Madow is an independent researcher and the host and scholar-curator of Notions of Progress. His MA in History from Cambridge University — where his thesis examined Georges Sorel's epistemology of myth and the role of ideas in animating collective action — gave him a grounding in how belief systems about progress function as historical forces. His MSc from Oxford's Saïd Business School, specializing in Complexity Science and Leadership, introduced him to the same question from the opposite direction: how systems evolve and change propagates through institutions. Notions of Progress is the inquiry that connects the two.
About the Show
Notions of Progress is a podcast tracing how the idea of progress has been understood,
contested, and reimagined historically — from antiquity to the age of artificial intelligence.
Rather than prescribing a position, the show surfaces the debates, drawing on thinkers from Plato to contemporary scholars of technology and complexity, and approaches its subject as a curator and researcher: seeking a pluralistic, wide-ranging spectrum of ideas rather than advocating one over another.