A member of the Department of Library, Information and Archive Sciences has been awarded a doctorate in archives and records management by the University of Aberystwyth. Dr Charles J. Farrugia thus becomes the first Maltese to be awarded a Ph.D. in Archives and Records Management. Following his studies leading to a Masters in history from the University of Malta, he studied archives and records management at post graduate level at the University of Northumbria in Newcastle and University College London. Farrugia continued with his studies at Aberystwyth which is one of the three UK universities offering such a qualification.
Apart from his commitment at the Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences (MaKS) and other Faculties in our University, Farrugia is also Malta’s national archivist, and has been lecturing archives and records management at the current Department and in the previous CCT division for the last fifteen years. Together with Dr Lillian Sciberras he has been instrumental in the setting up of Archives and Records Management studies locally.
A year ago Farrugia successfully defended his thesis entitled ‘The Role and Organisation of EU National Archives: An Application and Evolution of the Dresner Model’. The study was carried out under the supervision of Professor David Ellis and Dr Julie Dawn Mathias. It maps the development of EU national archives from a management perspective and applies the Dresner culture performance model on three cases studies - the National Archives in Kew, the National Archives of Finland and the State Archives of Cyprus. The study proposes adaptations in the application of the model in order for the creation of a new yardstick to measure performance in a national archives environment.