Scottish Indexes Conference

Scottish Indexes Conference XXX - Saturday 22 November 2025

Interested in tracing your Scottish genealogy? The Scottish Indexes Conference is an opportunity to learn new research skills, discover diverse records and see how others have put these into practice. If you want to trace your Scottish family tree, this is the event for you.

Don’t live in the UK? No problem. We are live from 7 am to 11 pm UK time. We do this to make our conferences time-zone friendly. Each presentation is shown twice, once between 7 am and 3 pm UK time, then again between 3 pm and 11 pm. You can come and go throughout the day. A schedule will be posted on our website a week or so before the conference.

Donations

This conference is run through the kindness of your donations. We are delighted to be able to continue hosting these for the Scottish genealogy community.

If you are in a position to donate at this time, we greatly appreciate your support. We know that these are challenging financial times for many so we are keeping the conferences free with no recommended donation. We want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has donated to keep these conferences going.

Scottish Indexes Conference Donation - £10 -
Scottish Indexes Conference Donation - £20 -
Scottish Indexes Conference Donation - £30 -
Scottish Indexes Conference Donation - £50 -

Registration Instructions

Zoom: It is free to register for this event on Zoom. Click here, fill out the registration form and you should receive an email confirmation within a few minutes. You will also receive reminders in the week before the conference.

Facebook: This is an easy way to watch and interact with the presenters and attendees of the Scottish Indexes Conference. It is also possible to cast the conference to a smart TV which makes viewing more comfortable. Click here to join the Scottish Indexes Facebook Group.

Presenters

These were the speakers at the September 2025 Conference. Details on speakers for our November conference will be coming soon.

'I want to research my family history – how do I start?' by genealogist Lorraine Stewart

'Women of Glamis: Privilege and Privation' by Ingrid Thomson, archivist at Glamis Castle

'The Servants in Traquair House' by Margaret Fox, archivist at Traquair House

'Searching For Your Scottish Ancestors' by Hilary Hartigan, volunteer at the Anglo-Scottish Family History Society

'Discovering Ancestors Through Royal Commission Reports and Published Sources' by genealogist Emma Maxwell

'Tracing your Family History: Church Records' by Dr Irene O'Brien, senior archivist at Glasgow City Archives

'What's New at Scottish Indexes' by genealogist Graham Maxwell

Schedules & Handouts

Handouts: Emma has prepared the conference handout for the 29th Scottish Indexes Conference on 13 September 2025 which includes information on all the presenters and many of the resources mentioned during the day. Download the PDF handout here. If you are looking for handouts from previous conferences please see our Past Conferences page.

Lorraine Stewart has kindly prepared a handout for her presentation, 'I want to research my family history – how do I start?' which is available here.

Schedules: About a week before our next conference we will post schedules in a variety of timezones.

Past Conferences

These events are designed to be interactive and are best watched live. Some presentations from previous conferences are available to watch again. Visit our Past Conferences page to see what you have missed so far and catch up with some of the presentations.