The Bermuda Historical Society has donated 20 years’ worth of theses and thesis proposals to Bermuda College to support students and researchers.

BHC executive member Shirley Pearman said the proposals from scholarship awardees dated back to 1996, tackling topics ranging from Bermuda’s racial history to the cedar blight.

They will now be will available in the college’s rare book room.

“They had been sitting in my filing cabinet,” Mrs Pearman said. “We felt that if they were made available to students at the college, the students would be able to study them and use them to help put together their own resumes, their own proposals.”

She reached out to the ten winners of the society’s historical awards and bursaries about making the theses and thesis proposals public, and all were interested in taking part, although some of the theses would not be available immediately due to publication agreements.

Mrs Pearman said the society launched its biannual awards in 1995, explaining that while there were a number of scholarships and bursaries for those seeking to study business or the arts, the same options were not available for those who wished to study history.

The most recent winner was Rosemary Hall, whose thesis proposal was a phonetical analysis of “Bermudian English” to form the basis for a closer examination of the accent’s “social meaning”. Other past winners include Clarence Maxwell, Kim Dismont-Robinson and James Munro.

Robert Masters, the library director at Bermuda College, thanked the society for the donation.

“These will be useful not only for the students at the college, but students outside of Bermuda College who may be researching a related topic,” he said.