Women Historians of St Andrews is on ongoing project led by Aileen Fyfe, Frances Andrews and Kate Ferris at the University of St Andrews.
The aim of the project is to investigate the history of women’s participation in, and experiences of, the study of history at St Andrews.
Women were first admitted to the University as degree students in 1892, but it was some time before women started to be appointed as lecturers in history – it was 1945 before the first woman was appointed to a long-term lectureship in Modern History, and not until the 1960s were women employed in any numbers as lecturers in history.
The project aims to seek out the women who studied, researched and taught history at St Andrews, at any point in time. I was involved in the project during the summer of 2021, collecting and transcribing eight oral history interviews from women who either studied at or worked in the School of History at St Andrews.
I also wrote a Life Story for each of the interviews I conducted. These are being gradually added to the project website by the current Research Assistant Alyssa Shepherd, who has also collected and added images and created a short video for each of the interviewees.
Currently available:
You can find out more on the project website, which will be updated regularly as the project progresses.
Morag Allan Campbell 