Hi! I'm Sophia, an aspiring scientist and philomath. I love learning about everything and anything and delight in spending time with people who are passionate about the things they love! I am really interested and curious about how we can use chemistry to improve processes and products to help society. For example, my research project is looking into the possibility of turning struvite, a mineral which is a by-product of waste-water treatment processes into slow-release nitrogen and phosphorous fertilisers, which would be a green source nitrogen and phosphorous fertilisers and help achieve goals of zero-waste.  If you are researching something similar or are interested in learning more about the project, please reach out! I am super happy to talk about the project and meet other who are doing something similar and possibly collaborate! 

Hello! I am a second year at the University of St Andrews, studying Mathematics and Computer Science. My research focus is on applying Bayesian networks to electroencephalography (EEG) data.

School of Classics President | Laidlaw Scholar | Foreign Affairs Review Analyst | 4x State Department Intern

Hey everyone - I'm Gitika, but I go by Aki, and I'm a 2024 Laidlaw Scholar based at the University of St Andrews. I'm originally from California, but moved to Scotland to pursue my undergraduate studies in history and economics. My Laidlaw research focuses on the colonial and postcolonial histories of sexuality and gender in Asia, and particularly how it has impacted the current lives and experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals based in India and Japan.  I'm eager to meet you all, so do reach out if you want to chat about research or just connect over a shared interest! Apart from my work in gender and sexuality history, I'm also keenly interested in archival history, colonial/postcolonial studies, and language / linguistics. Outside of academics, I'm often playing music, walking along the Fife coast with a hot cup of tea, writing, or watching Doctor Who with my friends.

I’m currently a third year mathematics student at the University of St Andrews and a 2025 Leadership and Research Scholar. My research project was in Pure Mathematics, specifically Algebraic Graph Theory. I studied pseudo-similar vertices in graphs using tools from semigroup theory.

Hello! I am an incoming third year Mathematics student at the University of St Andrews, and my Laidlaw research project is geared at investigating the intersection between coloniality and mathematics and its impacts on students from the Global South. It is the product of my (rather polar) interests in English Literature and Mathematics!

Hia! I'm Bethan, but most people know me as Bea. I am going into my second year at the University of St Andrews studying Social Anthropology and Geography. My Laidlaw research project explores the power of the Pacific research methodology and cultural storytelling tool of talanoa within the sphere of Pacific climate change discourse. In order to make meaningful change happen on the terms of those most affected by climate change and with some of the greatest history of connections with the ocean, the use of talanoa can be expanded to facilitate culturally appropriate collaboration and effective, meaningful climate change action.  I hope to implement this methodology for my Leadership in Action project to bridge the gap between localised Pacific perspectives of climate change and political spheres that fund and control climate action within the Pacific Islands. By using talanoa to co-produce knowledge and share real-world stories on the ground, I hope to facilitate action beyond the local level and tackle the reoccurring issue of scaling solutions within climate change action - particularly from within such a culturally diverse region that is so often homogenised within climate change discourse.  __ More broadly, my interests lie in environmental and visual anthropology, overall aiming to understand and put into practice how visual storytelling can empower people in the face of our changing climate, and inspire audiences beyond academia to see how interconnected our world is - and the people within it. In bridging the intersection of human experiences and our physical environments, I hope to portray a future that highlights localised solutions to environmental challenges and to make this future empowering and accessible to a wider audience through film. 

With my current interests in media studies and being impacted by the ongoing war in Ukraine, I became interested to explore the communicative methods used within the environments of far-right, authoritarian regimes. My project 'The Dominance of Collective Mystical Thinking Within the Rise of Far-Right Politics' will delve into the performance of authoritarian governance based on magical practices, involving interaction based on set of rituals and symbolic elements that aims to distance individuals from objective reality and involve them into specific collective imaginary.  The research will focus on communicative applications, particularly looking into speech structure and non-verbal elements (context, gestures, media tools). It will analyse the online materials to understand the communicative patterns used between participants, contributing to the greater understanding of the authoritarian structure and its potentials for social control, and finding pathways for its resistance.  --- I'm incoming third year Film and Anthropology student, being interested in documentary and video-essay form. I have extensive background in cinematography and commercial videography, with passion of story making and telling.  I am interested to communicate and expand my knowledge, share my experience, especially if you are working with similar topics of Magic, Political Power, War, Displacement, Media and Communication

Hello hello! I am an incoming third-year student at the University of St Andrews pursuing a degree in biology. Originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, I moved to Italy in 2013 and have been living there ever since. Growing up in the birthplace of the Renaissance, I wanted to pursue higher education in a place with historical significance and somewhere where I could take walks in nature between classes; hence my choice of the University of St Andrews that is situated on the beautiful Scottish coastline. Over the course of my academic journey I have had the chance to explore numerous areas in biology, ranging from evolution to bacteriophage discovery to cell systems, out of which epigenetics and gene regulation during development have piqued my interest.  My primary research interest is developmental biology, which arose from my fascination with how multicellular organisms originate from a single cell. Therefore, my research focus for the first summer of the Laidlaw Scholars programme was the investigation of abdominal metamorphosis in Dipteran insects. To do so, I used fixation and Hoechst staining in addition to microscopy to study cell movement during several developmental stages in 2 species of flies. As for my leadership in action (LiA) project, I would like to make a meaningful contribution to an ongoing project related to wildlife conservation.  If I am not in lectures or studying in the library, I can be found working on a short story, watching films (and logging them on Letterboxd), reading old science fiction, or on a hike capturing the nature around me through photography. Having grown up in a multicultural setting, I enjoy learning more about the different cultures that exist on our planet, whether it is through cuisine, music, travelling, or linguistics. The latter partially explains my grasp of nearly five languages, though I have to warn you that my fluency differs dramatically. Otherwise, I also love spending time with animals, playing board games, or just talking. More than anything, I am always happy to meet like-minded individuals who are curious about the world. Thus, please feel free to reach out or connect with me on LinkedIn! I would particularly appreciate the input of any scholar who is interested (or has experience) in similar potential LiA areas.