An Anniversary Like No Other: Celebrating 400 Years of Research and Impact at the Pembroke 400 Festival

On 29th June, 1624, Pembroke College received its Royal Charter from King James I, declaring Pembroke the newest constituent college of the University of Oxford. Four centuries later, hundreds of guests gathered across our four quads to celebrate the four-hundredth anniversary of the College’s foundation.

We marked the occasion by honouring Pembroke’s core purpose, celebrating the research undertaken by our members and the global impact of our community. For the last four hundred years, Pembrokians have been contributing to understandings of the world around us, as well as to wider art and culture. The 400 Festival saw some of the most pre-eminent Pembrokians of our time gathered to deliver talks and performances of their wide-ranging talents.

Among them, and the first speaker of the day, was England’s Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty, who kicked off the sessions with a discussion of the latest advances in medicine. Taking guests through areas of progress, he highlighted 10-year survival rates for various forms of cancer and the significant improvements seen since the 1970s, before acknowledging areas where more progress is needed, discussing mental health treatment and the ways in which we might decrease the amount of time spent in ill health throughout our lives.

With four streams of speaker sessions, covering everything from Innovations in Health to Learning from Language, Addressing Global Challenges, and AI and the Digital Era, guests were able to sample and explore a range of topics. With four streams of speaker sessions, guests were able to pick and choose between a range of topics. After spending the morning with Professor Lynda Mugglestone questioning the authenticity of Samuel Johnson’s famous ‘dictionary desk’, by the afternoon you could have covered brain disease with Professor Kevin Talbot, conservation and biodiversity with Professor Amy Dickman, and the opportunities and impact of AI with Jen Easterly, the US Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Of course, academic research is not the only impact our community has on the wider world, and so highlighting the best of our extracurricular talents also formed a significant part of the day. Throughout the day, guests could choose between tours of the gardens led by our gardener Richard Markham and alumnus Tim Richardson; wine tasting and exploring the wine cellars with former Bursar John Church; performances of Patience Agbabi’s Telling Tales; or even exploring the treasures of the Pembroke Library and Archives – including manuscripts older than we are! 

Our evening programme began with the world premiere of alumnus Tarik O’Regan’s specially commissioned musical composition, The Wonders We Seek Without Us. Incorporating significant figures in Pembroke’s history and the wider world, the performance celebrated the desire to learn which binds us together as a community. Guests were then transported back to our foundation with seventeenth-century music and dancing with the help of Passamezzo, a musical group led by Pembroke alumna Tamsin Lewis. Or if dancing wasn’t to their taste, they were treated to a performance of the College’s history in dramatic readings the Chapel. After enjoying a drinks reception on the lawn and carvery dinner in Hall or fish and chips from Farthings, guests returned to Chapel Quad for the highly anticipated light show, a spectacular end to a day of celebrating all things Pembroke.

Whether you joined us in person or raised a glass from afar, thank you for celebrating this milestone in Pembroke’s history with us. Here’s to the next 400 years.

If you’d like to watch any of the speaker sessions or the light show, you can find recordings on our YouTube channel here.

Photos and video by Phil Sills @ oxevents-stillsandvideo.co.uk