Our Histories

The University of St Andrews is proud of being Scotland’s oldest university, and the third oldest in the English-speaking world. But while we know quite a lot about its medieval and early modern origins, we know far less about how St Andrews became the international, research-intensive, socially-responsible university of today.

We aim to improve our understanding of the relatively-recent history of the University of St Andrews. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are the period in which the curriculum was modernised and expanded (e.g. introducing new honours programmes, and degrees in science and modern languages), and when the student community became more diverse, with the admission of women and the growth in international students. Yet, we currently know much more about the medieval and early modern history of the University than about its more recent past. This project aims to change that, with a particular focus on the student community.

Since January 2026, teams of undergraduate students – participating in the VIP module ‘History of the University’ – have been using the University’s archives to identify and investigate the students who studied at St Andrews in the period 1900 to 1945. We estimate that there are around 8,400 of them, so there is still much more to do (!), but the profiles and stories on this website will give you a flavour of what we have been doing.

If you are interested in other aspects of the University’s history, our sister sites are:

• St Andrews and the Legacies of Empire, 1700-1900 (investigates the University’s historic connections to enslavement and empire)
• Women Historians of St Andrews (focuses on women who taught and/or studied History at St Andrews, from the 1890s onwards)