Thank you all for your replies. They're very helpful!

Hi there,
Thank you for your post. I will contact my old uni but the chances of getting anything from them are rather slim :)

Hi everyone,
I am planning to apply for a doctoral training programme. However, I have a problem with obtaining academic references since I received my Master's degree in 2005 from an European university. Although I was awarded the Academic Excellence Scholarship for five consecutive years and my thesis was marked as excellent, I don't think that anyone remembers me after 8 years. Now I am a final year student with The Open University, working towards my BA (Hons) but OU references will be pretty standard since it's a distance learning. Has anyone been in a similar position? What would you advise?
Thanks in advance.