What was it like, trying to make a career as a woman historian? How did St Andrews women navigate issues such as precarity, sexism, promotion opportunities?
The career trajectory of Edith MacQueen – the first woman to obtain a PhD in History at the University of St. Andrews – poses a certain paradox: a woman of high academic standing, she possessed the right credentials…
Ann Kettle was a lecturer in the Department of Mediaeval History at St Andrews for more than forty years. In addition to her teaching and research, she held various administrative posts in the university. Beyond St…
Barbara Crawford lectured in the Department of Medieval History from 1971 until 2001. She had previously been both an undergraduate and postgraduate student at St Andrews, and was the first long-term woman staff member…
Women’s colleges and residences provided important job opportunities for early women academics. Unlike Cambridge, Oxford or London, St Andrews did not establish women-only colleges, but it did have women-only…
In the early twentieth century, there were few long-term jobs in academia: most departments had just one professor (or ‘chair’), and some had only a lecturer. For those hoping to embark on a career in a university, the…
The first PhD in History at St Andrews was awarded to T.F.G Dexter in 1922. Perhaps remarkably, it was only a few years later before two women followed suit: Edith MacQueen and Edith Thomson were awarded their PhDs in…