Chair of the HA Committee for Public History, Dr Andrew Foster, commented that it was encouraging to see such a varied set of entries in this first year of the competition, all of a high standard, well presented, closely argued and with excellent technical apparatus. 

Topics chosen had covered particular types of documents, matters relating to cataloguing, British and foreign archives, questions raised by oral history and 'popular memory', and ways of dealing with current problems besetting the archive world.  It was pleasant to award prizes for theses covering two very different aspects of archival work, one with traditional concerns for presenting a particular class of ecclesiastical records, and the winner - perhaps appropriate at this time of need - addressing how archivists need to 'sell' their services to colleagues in the public sector, not to mention the wider public. These theses all stand as good testimony to the health of our university courses training the future generation of archivists.

Please find attached the dissertation which received the second prize. This prize was awarded to Emerlinda K M Jarman from the University of Liverpool, for her dissertation ‘An edition of the depositions from EDC2/6, deposition book of the Consistory Court of Chester, September 1558 - March 1558/9.' The judges thought this  ‘a very solid introduction to the edition of the documents, with a thorough understanding of the work of the consistory court.'