New Honorary Fellows appointed by Governing Body

The new year has brought in a host of new Honorary Fellows. Four former Pembroke students were appointed as Honorary Fellows by Governing Body just before Christmas to celebrate their prolific careers and achievements. We are pleased to welcome Radoslaw Sikorski, Professor Mark Thomson, Dr Michael Hwang, and Sebastian Raduletu as our new Honorary Fellows!

Poland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Radoslaw Sikorski graduated from Pembroke with a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics in 1986. After his time at Pembroke, Radoslaw pursued a career as a freelance journalist. He spent some time in Afghanistan as a war correspondent for The Sunday Telegraph between 1986 and 1988, winning awards for his reports and photographs. Radoslaw’s political career began upon his return to Poland in 1989 where he served as Deputy Defence Minister (1992), Deputy Foreign Minister, Minister of National Defence (2005), and Minister of Foreign Affairs (2007, a position he was reappointed for in 2023. 

Professor Mark Thomson, who was recently selected as CERN’s next Director-General from 2026 and whose portrait hung in our Dining Hall last year to celebrate his achievements, matriculated at Pembroke in 1985. He completed both a degree in Physics and a doctorate in Particle Physics at the University of Oxford. Since graduating, Professor Thomson has worked at University College London, CERN, and the University of Cambridge. His research has focused on electroweak physics at CERN's large electron positron collider, neutrino physics and physics at future colliders. From 2018-2024 Professor Thomson was the Executive Chair of STFC. He published “Modern Particle Physics” in 2013, a key text for undergraduate courses globally. 

Our first Farthing Scholar in Criminal Law, Sebastian Raduletu matriculated at Pembroke in 2015 where he taught criminal law to Mods students alongside pursuing his DPhil which he was awarded in 2023 with no corrections. His research at Pembroke focused on the creation of a form of corporate criminal liability for the EU. A Professor at the Law Faculty of the University of Craiova, Romania since 2015, Sebastian was also recently elected as a judge to the European Court of Human Rights in respect of Romania in 2023. 

Dr Michael Hwang was the first Singaporean to be admitted to Pembroke College. He joined as a Gordon Warter Scholar to read jurisprudence from 1962 to 1965 followed by the BCL in 1966. He then joined the teaching faculty at the University of Sydney for about 18 months, before returning to Singapore. There he joined Allen & Gledhill, one of Singapore’s largest law firms, and remained there for close to 30 years before retiring to set up his own boutique practice as an international arbitrator. He served on the High Court of Singapore as a Judicial Commissioner (a Judge with a fixed tenure) for 19 months in 1991 to 1992, and later as Chief Justice of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Courts from 2010 to 2018. He also served (at different times) as Singapore’s Non-Resident Ambassador to Switzerland and Argentina.

We look forward to welcoming them back to College to celebrate in due course.