Wednesday 31 July 2019

DNA Summer School in Belfast (26-30 Aug 2019)

The North of Ireland Family History Society is forever coming up with new innovations and the latest one is running their first DNA summer school. Apparently tickets are selling fast and half the places went within the first few days of this initiative being announced. So if you’re interested, be quick! Contact them today and book your place on this excellent programme by emailing them at: education@nifhs.org

Each class costs £5. Book one class or book many!


Here are the summer school details:

Monday 26 August 2019

11.00am Y-DNA Martin McDowell
Y-DNA can be a very powerful tool to break through a brickwall. This class will cover the different levels of testing available and will explain how to interpret and work with your YDNA results.

2.00pm MT-DNA Martin McDowell
Mitochondrial DNA is the DNA test which is used the least in Northern Ireland. We will look at the circumstances where it can be a useful tool and how to understand your results.

Tuesday 27 August 2019

11.00am Uploading to other sites Martin McDowell
No matter which company you test with it is always advisable to add your DNA results to as many sites as possible. This class will take you through the steps and provide suppoort to allow you to do it there and then.

2.00pm Ethnicity Estimates Anne Johnston
This session will explain how ethnicity percentages are calculated and how they can be useful in analysing your DNA cousin matches.

Wednesday 28 August 2019

11.00am Using My Heritage DNA Anne Johnston
MyHeritage is one of the 4 main autosomal DNA testing companies and this session will outline the key tools which they provide to help you to analyse your matches.

2.00pm AutoClusters Martin McDowell
AutoClusters is a new tool provided by My Heritage DNA. Learn how they work, what to do with them and how they can help you find new DNA matches.

Thursday 29 August 2019

11.00am Maternal and Paternal Linking on FTDNA Martin McDowell
Using the maternal and paternal tabs on Family Tree DNA is an excellent way to make progress with your DNA matches. This session will cover how the integration of your family tree and your matches page can unveil new information that can lead you to confirm your relationship to a new match.

2.00pm Thru Lines - a new tool on Ancestry Anne Johnston
ThruLines is a new tool on AncestryDNA (replacing DNA Circles) which shows you the common ancestors who may connect you to your DNA matches. It uses public and private but searchable family trees on Ancestry to find people who are in both your tree and in other Ancestry members trees.

Friday 30 August 2019

11.00am Using DNA Painter Martin McDowell 
Chromosome painting is a relatively new, yet powerful, tool available through DNA Painter which  can be used to identify which segments of DNA you get from which ancestor. In this class you will also learn how to amalgamate your matches list from FTDNA and My Heritage and organise them by segment.

2.00pm  Theory of Family Relativity Anne Johnston 
The Theory of Family Relativity is a new tool from MyHeritage which uses information from their 10 billion genealogical records and from family trees on MyHeritage to offer theories on how you and your DNA matches might be related.


Classes will be held at Unit C4, Valley Business Centre, 67 Church Road, Newtownnabey, BT36 7LS.

Each two hour class will take the form of a 1hr talk followed by either questions/answers or a practical and they are priced at £5 per class.

Contact them today and book your place on this excellent programme by emailing them at: education@nifhs.org