Margaret Macdonald vividly remembers the excitement of studying in the young department of Mediaeval History in the 1960s… and explains why, after a career in school teaching, she decided to come back to do a PhD.…
Amanda DeGiorgis graduated with a PhD in Medieval History in 2008. She is currently a classified reference librarian at the Los Alamos National Lab, where she works with records cataloguing the history of the Manhattan…
Elspeth King (1949-2025) graduated with a MA in Mediaeval History in 1971. Working at museums in Glasgow, Dunfermline, and Stirling, King was central to redefining the preservation of public heritage and social history…
Julia Smith first came to St Andrews as a temporary lecturer in 1982-83, and returned as Reader in Mediaeval History in 1995 to 2005. She has also held posts at Sheffield, Manchester, Glasgow and Oxford, as well as in…
Vanessa Harding knew nothing about St Andrews until she arrived on the sleeper at the start of term in autumn 1970. ‘It looked like a nice place to be, and I knew people who were there. It’s the kind of decision you…
Ann Kettle lectured 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 Andrews,…
In the 1970s it was a truth universally acknowledged that most people from Dumfries Academy – my secondary school – went on to Glasgow University to study. I might very well have done the same (writes Sue Hill, MA…
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…
Lorna Walker studied History at St Andrews in the late 1940s, and returned in the 1960s as a lecturer in Medieval History and Warden of University Hall. She retired in 1991, and lived in St Andrews until her death in…
As we explore past exam papers throughout the twentieth century, it is clear they have been getting more and more similar to the examinations that history students at St Andrews sit today. The papers from 1905 were…