Hi! My name is James and I am a Medicine Student at the University of Cambridge. My research project is titled 'Can Helminths be Considered 'Old Friends' to the Human Immune System and Metabolism?'.  If you're interested in learning more about my research, or simply starting a conversation, I'd love to connect.

Hello! My name is Victoria Dai, and I'm a second year at Cornell University, located in New York, majoring in Biology and Society on the pre-med track. I am passionate about working with local communities and people of all ages, from children in Head Start programs to elderly adults in hospice care. For my Leadership-in-Action project during the summer of 2026, I partnered with make_sense Americas to collaborate with Picacho Con Futuro, a local NGO in Comuna 6 of Medellín, Colombia. The goal of the LiA is to developed a proposal for a new cultural café designed to serve as a welcoming community space and support local social and economic development. Outside of Laidlaw and academics, I enjoy singing in an a cappella group, playing tennis and the piano, and spending time knitting. I love visiting new countries and trying different global foods! I would love to meet more people so please don't hesitate to reach out! 

I am a third year European Studies student at Trinity College Dublin, currently completing an exchange year in Germany. My Summer 1 research project investigated factors that encouraged political participation among refugees and asylum seekers in Ireland. 

Hi! My name is Evalyn Lee, and I am in my fourth year at Georgetown University. I am studying English, Art History, and French! Fun fact(s): I write satire for my campus newspaper, The Georgetown Heckler, and am passionate about Mokapot coffee. My research focuses on the 18th-century poet, Elizabeth Singer Rowe. Despite the limited scholarship on the poet, Rowe was an influential political writer who made significant contributions to literary history, including the development of the novel. Through my research, I hope to add to the scholarship that highlights the work of early modern women writers.  For my Leadership-in-Action project, I will be partnering with make_sense and Les Jardins d'Haïti, an intergenerational third-space for seniors, in Marseille, France. 

Hi! I’m Alina, an undergraduate Biochemistry student with a strong passion for meaningful work that has a positive impact on the world. I’m particularly fascinated by health sciences, and my long-term goal is to contribute to making healthcare more accessible, equitable, and effective. I believe that starts with improving the quality of health information and ends with optimizing how healthcare is delivered, whether through advances in pharmaceutical research or innovations in point-of-care solutions. To explore this mission, I’ve chosen to pursue an interdisciplinary research project within the School of Medicine, despite my degree being based in the School of Biology. My research focuses on direct-to-consumer health screening tests offered to generally well individuals in the UK. These tests (for instance at-home genetic screenings) are becoming increasingly popular for promoting autonomy in personal health management. However, they also pose risks, including misinformation, false positives, and overdiagnosis. My project aims to contribute to the growing field of evidence-based diagnostics by advocating a shift from early diagnosis to optimal diagnosis, ensuring diagnosis is not only early but is also clinically useful. Outside of my academic life, I’m very active and love exploring new hobbies. I love exploring new sports, hence I’ve recently taken up Judo and Olympic Weightlifting. I also enjoy cycling, especially through the scenic Scottish countryside, which I explore regularly by bike (the perks of not owning a car!). I also have a creative side: I enjoy embroidery, as well as listening to and producing electronic music, and I’m currently learning how to DJ. Additionally, I’m involved with the Entrepreneurship Centre at the University of St Andrews, where I help foster an entrepreneurial spirit within our student community. I’m a versatile and curious person who thrives on meeting new people and discovering new ideas. I’m always excited by opportunities that combine creativity, innovation, and impact.

Hello hello! I am an incoming fourth-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.  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 decided to assist biodiversity monitoring and conservation efforts in the heart of the Amazon rainforest jungle in Peru.  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! 

Hia! I'm Bethan, but most people know me as Bea. I am going into my third year at the University of St Andrews studying Social Anthropology. 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.  This summer, I am taking my learning to the Pacific for my Leadership in Action project working at Tiapapata Art Centre, Samoa. My work here lends my passion for visual storytelling towards capturing and promoting the phenomenal, ever-developing projects that the art centre runs. As an educational and creative hub dedicated to fostering the continued transmission of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage, I hope to co-produce visual media and share real-world stories of the hard but joyous work the art centre puts into preserving traditional Samoan arts and culture.   __ 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. 

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!

Hey everyone - I'm Gitika, but I go by Aki, and I'm a former Laidlaw Scholar currently 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 focussed 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. Now, I am entering my final undergraduate year with an aim of pursuing postgraduate studies in social & economic history. 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.

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! 

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

Hey there! I'm Miki, a 2025 scholar pursuing a combined degree in Persian, Arabic and International Relations at the University of St Andrews. I care deeply about refugee issues - particularly in the Middle East, owing to my personal experiences with refugees in Jordan and Iran. My research project explores how the  Jordanian and Lebanese governments' differing policies toward Syrian refugees have influenced their integration into their host societies.