Theme: To the next 600 years

Our TEDx event was focused on a celebration of innovation, discovery and success. Over the last six centuries, students of our university have excelled across the entire academic spectrum and paved the way for groundbreaking research. In the spirit of this legacy we welcomed the pioneers and revolutionary thinkers of today, to examine the ideas that have shaped our past and will serve to transform our future.
Experts from a range of fields discussed topics that dominate our daily lives in unimaginable ways.

St. Andrews
United Kingdom

Henrik Scharfe

The groundbreaking inventor recently graced the 2012 TIME 100 Influential people list for his creation of his robotic doppleganger Geminoid-DK. Pushing the boundaries between humans and machines, he has led us to question our dependence on technology and its role in our everyday lives.

Sunetra Gupta

The award-winning novelist, essayist and scientist is currently a professor of Theoretical Epidemology at  the University of Oxford. Her research has shed a new light on infectious disease agents that are responsible for Malaria, HIV, influenza and bacterial meningitis.

Andy Pag


As an adventurer dedicated to pioneering sustainable travel, Andy completed a two year expedition driving around the world in an old school bus that he salvaged from a scrap yard and which was powered only by used cooking oil.  He has also driven a chocolate-powered lorry to Timbuktu in Mali (a world-first carbon negative expedition) and organised the ‘Grease to Greece’ rally for cars fuelled on restaurant scraps.

Edward Gardiner


Edward is an exceptional behavioural scientist who is currently leading the UK’s first Behavioural Design Lab, applying insights and methods of behavioural science to the design of new products. He has also applied his innovative theories to complex social issues such as obesity, binge drinking and climate change.

Gavin Oattes

A sell-out success in the UK comedy circuit, Gavin put his comedic career on hold in order to found the Tree of Knowledge. ToK is a motivational training company which provides team building courses, educational resources and training courses for business owners, students and young people alike.

Louise Richardson


Our incredible first female Principal and Vice Chancellor of the University of St  Andrews and a political scientist whose specialist field is the study of terrorism. She is the author of highly-acclaimed works on terrorism and has given over 300 talks on terrorism and counter-terrorism. She is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Ian Bradley

Ian is an outstanding academic, author, theologian, Church of Scotland minister, journalist and broadcaster. He has researched widely on religious matters and has written over 30 books. He is the appointed Head of Religious Broadcasting for BBC Scotland and as a journalist frequently contributes to The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Tablet and Life and Work.

Kathryn Rudy


As a world-renowned scholar of Art History, Kathryn has held research, teaching, and curatorial positions in the US, the UK, Canada, The Netherlands and Belgium. Her research focuses on the reception and original function of manuscripts and she has pioneered the use of the densitometer to measure the dirt that original readers deposited in their books.

Juan Pablo Sarmiento Barletti

Juan Pablo Sarmiento Barletti is a Peruvian British-trained anthropologist who teaches Social Anthropology and Sustainable Development at the University of St Andrews. He has worked amongst Ashaninka groups in Peruvian Amazonia since 2007, in themes stemming from their experience of the Peruvian internal war (1980-2000) including violence, reconciliation, the development of conflict resolution mechanisms, and memory. He has also been active in the indigenous Amazonian political movement in Peru, especially in its struggle against the aggressive neoliberal development policies put forth by the state, a process which his current work interrogates from an anthropological perspective.

Maureen Maclasaac


Originally from Nova Scotia, Canada, Maureen is a fourth-year undergraduate studying economics and mathematics. During the summer of 2011 she studied risk as an economics research assistant at Cape Breton University in Canada. Subsequently, she interned as a member of the Risk team at Barclays in 2012. A former competitive debater, Maureen was on the Canadian National Debate Team while in high school and represented St Andrews as a judge at the 2011 World Universities Debate Championship in Gaborone, Botswana. Maureen is currently attending St Andrews on a full scholarship awarded by the Dr Ernest L Ransome III Scholarship Trust.

Tomohiro Harada

Tomohiro is both a globetrotter and a home-maker. Since the age of nine, he has left his family and his birthplace of Japan to live in six different countries, and travel through just under 500 cities in over 50 countries in a journey propelled by curiosity and the eternal desire to learn “what is out there.” Along the way Tomohiro has both suffered from, and possibly found the solution to, one of the defining existential crisis of the age: how does one create a home in a rapidly globalizing world?