As part of the College's 550th anniversary celebrations, St Catharine's will be hosting several events and lectures open to students, staff, Fellows, alumni and the public. Recordings will be published online so that anyone who was not able to attend has the opportunity to watch at their leisure.
John Addenbrooke lecture
In February, the St Catharine's community had the honour of welcoming Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub FRS, OM, who spoke on the topic of 'Equity in healthcare delivery from theory to practice'. Sir Magdi is Emeritus Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, and established the largest heart and lung transplantation programme in the world at Harefield Hospital where more than 2,500 transplant operations have been performed. He has developed novel operations for several complex congenital heart anomalies.
Environmental sustainability lecture
In May, Professor Julian Allwood (2018), Dudley Robinson Professorial Fellow in Engineering at St Catharine's and Professor of Engineering and the Environment at the University of Cambridge, spoke about why climate mitigation and other good societal goals aren't happening and how the College community could be involved in novel approaches to making good things happen.
Composers in conversation
A special event in the Kellaway Series saw distinguished alumni Nigel Hess (1971, Music; Honorary Fellow 2016) and Robert Saxton (1972, Music; Honorary Fellow 2015) return to the College to talk about their careers as composers and the changing business of music-making.
Henn Lecture 2023
Professor Daniel Wakelin FBA, formerly a Junior Research Fellow at St Catharine's (2002–04) and now Jeremy Griffiths Professor of Medieval English Palaeography at the University of Oxford, focused his lecture on 'English writing in 1473'. His lecture includes numerous examples of medieval manuscripts, including some from the College’s own collection.
Bayly Memorial Lecture 2023
This biennial lecture is given in memory of the late Professor Sir Christopher Bayly (1970; Honorary Fellow 2014) and this year's speaker was Professor Francesca Trivellato, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Early Modern European History at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton). She chose to address the question ‘Can we rescue global history from the law of diminishing returns?’ and ruminated on the status of global history today, following its “seemingly irresistible rise”.
550th anniversary lecture
Professor Sir John Baker (1971; Honorary Fellow 2012) spoke on 25 November 2023, St Catharine’s Day itself. Sir John took the audience on a journey through the College’s Archive and his own personal collection to share what he had learned about Robert Woodlark, founder of St Catharine’s, and the College’s early years. He argued that the foundation of the College is “the greatest enigma in the history of the English higher education system” since we cannot definitively explain Woodlark’s decision to invest in a new institution rather than enrich King’s College (where he was Provost) and that it was unique for the head of one Cambridge College to found another College. He cited an absence of evidence for Woodlark’s birthplace and place of burial as indicative of the gaps in our knowledge about our founder and, rather aptly, shared a piece of advice from the Wildlife Trusts’ website warning that “the secretive woodlark can be hard to spot”.
