Graduation Address: Dr Catherine Eagleton, University Librarian and Director of Collections and Museums
Wednesday 2 July 2025 – afternoon ceremony
Vice-Chancellor, special guests, colleagues and graduates.
It is an honour to speak to you today, as we come together to appreciate and celebrate all you have done to be here, and all that family, friends and colleagues have done to help along the way.
I am very proud to be your University Librarian, which is a role that has existed continuously at St Andrews since the 1640s. And, even more so, to be the first woman in this role.
But do not be fooled: five years ago I could not have imagined that I would be doing this job today and addressing you as you celebrate your achievements. Rewinding the clock further, to when I was where you are today, graduating with my own PhD, and a point when I knew what the plan for the next year was, but I had no idea what might happen after that.
Lives and careers often look clearer in hindsight than they do at key moments of change, like this one. But however certain or uncertain you are about what comes next, I hope you embrace it with curiosity.
This theme of curiosity also links the Schools of Biology and History, here today, with our University’s Libraries and Museums. One of my predecessors as University Librarian in the 1700s would have known well the King James Library. In his library there was a collection of objects displayed alongside the books, to encourage curiosity about the world.
In the 1800s, those objects joined many thousands of others to create the first University Museum, in what is today Upper College Hall. The museum soon ran out of space, and work on the collections sometimes had to be done outside. There is a wonderful photograph in our University Collections of a large Cape aardvark being prepared for taxidermy by one of the janitors, just outside the United College buildings, which certainly would have been a curious sight.
I should at this point note for your reassurance – or for some among you to give advance warning of a possible disappointment – that our grounds team have confirmed that there are no aardvarks, or indeed any other taxidermy, in the Quad for our procession after this ceremony.
The museum and its collections moved in the early 1900s, to the newly built Bell Pettigrew Museum. At the time of the move, the curator of the museum was worried that its new location in the Bute Building was so far away that visitors would be discouraged, but I hope you have been undeterred and visited it while in St Andrews.
The new museum was established thanks to a generous gift by Elsie Bell Pettigrew, and named after her husband. Professor James Bell Pettigrew was an anatomist who, among many other things, was fascinated by how animals move and birds fly. His curiosity led him to build artificial wings, and to build and test a petrol-powered flying machine in 1903. That test flight did not end well, however, and after flying about 20 metres down a St Andrews street, the ornithopter crash-landed, breaking both the machine and Professor Bell Pettigrew’s femur.
In encouraging you to stay curious, I do, of course, hope that does not involve a trip to Ninewells Hospital or any broken bones, but I hope you embrace the spirit of optimism and determination that Professor Bell Pettigrew had. Keep asking questions, and exploring, and learning. Curiosity is what has brought you here, and it is what will carry you forwards, even if there are challenges, or twists and turns along the way.
Build your own flying machine, even if it might not take off straight away.
Congratulations again, class of 2025.