From 1996-1998 I studied the University of Strathclyde's Postgraduate Diploma programme in Genealogical Studies, as part of its very first cohort, and back in the days when it was an attendance based course! At the time there was no Masters year to go onto, as this did not start until two or three years after, and I had moved onto full time working as a genealogist by then.
As a part of the diploma course, we had to submit a final year dissertation, and the topic for mine was The Role of King James VI Hospital in Perth as a 19th Century Feudal Superior - you can read this freely via https://scotlandsgreateststory.wordpress.com/free-items/, albeit minus the important appendices!
Last week, whilst at the university to speak at the 2-day Irish course there, I caught up with Tahitia McCabe and Calista Williams, the heid yins of the course and institute programme, and asked a simple question - with the diploma course having been running for twenty years now, and with the development of the subsequent masters programme, there must be an extraordinary amount of knowledge there in similar dissertations from over the years, but how can such information be identified?
Well, a seriously huge thank you to Calista for getting back to me today with a LibraryThing link that lists all such dissertations! You can search for past topics at https://www.librarything.com/catalog/gsholton/yourlibrary. Calista has indicated that these dissertations may be shared if those who have written them give permission to do so, and dependant on how busy the university staff are to make such enquiries of past students.
But perhaps more importantly, if you are thinking of doing the courses, this catalogue will give a great idea of the kinds of topics that past students have pursued for their studies!
I'm off now to have a good search to see what my fellow genealogical professionals have been working on over the last twenty years! For further details on Strathclyde's genealogical courses, visit https://www.strath.ac.uk/courses/postgraduatetaught/genealogicalpalaeographicheraldicstudies/.
Update: Interestingly, in addition to my own dissertation on King James VI Hospital, I see there;s another piece of course work that I submitted, on Castle Menzies. I've completely forgotten what that was, so am now digging it out!!
(With thanks to Calista, and also to Graham Holton for starting the catalogue!)
Chris
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