2026 STEP Project titles
Below are the projects open for applications for STEP 2026
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Sponsors: Iris Cezayirli, School of Medicine
The aim of this project will be to prepare an Inclusive and Accessible Public Engagement Event. You will be a member of a group of students and will have an opportunity to plan a Public Engagement Event. The aim of this workshop will be to plan an inclusive and accessible event that gives participants/audiences from diverse backgrounds and individuals with neurodiverse conditions equal opportunities to engage with the event.
You will have the opportunity to research relevant websites and use online resources to plan your group’s event proposal. Weakly discussions and tasks will help your team plan the event. Group tasks for each week will help each of you broaden your knowledge and understanding of how to plan an inclusive and accessible. As a team you will have structured online sessions each week to discuss and make decisions. You will have plenty of opportunities to improve your skills by working as a team. You will work in a safe and respectful environment, you will have a voice, and your opinions will have value.
Your teamwork will lead you to your final group product which is an Inclusive and Accessible Public Engagement Event.
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Sponsor: Cassice Last, Halls Life
Being active is one of the NHS’s “5 Steps to Mental Wellbeing,” and we believe physical activity should be accessible to every student, not just those who enjoy competitive sport and traditional gym environments. Many students want to move more but feel unsure where to start or feel that typical sports settings aren’t for them. This project aims to change that by exploring low pressure, enjoyable ways of being active within and around Halls of Residence.
Halls have fantastic indoor and outdoor spaces (right on students’ doorsteps!) that are ideal for relaxed, inclusive, and social forms of activity. We want to understand what kinds of movement-based events students are genuinely interested in, what barriers stop them from taking part, and how to promote activities in ways that feel welcoming, achievable and realistic.
This project will also create the foundation for next academic year’s joint Halls Life and Saints Sports intern, generating a practical template they can adopt. Students will design a year-round activity template, explore the suitability of hall and outdoor spaces, and produce marketing that resonates with residents. Ultimately, the work will support wellbeing and make being active fun, flexible, and easy to access for all.
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Sponsors: Charlie Guy, Emma Gale and Sarah Bowers - School of Medicine
Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) is increasingly expected in research and education, yet many researchers report uncertainty about how to involve the public meaningfully and ethically. This project will bring together an interdisciplinary team of undergraduate students to co-develop a practical, accessible PPI Starter Toolkit for use across the University.
Working alongside FCAC volunteers, patient partners, and staff, students will review existing guidance, identify common barriers to participation, and design clear, user-friendly resources that support inclusive involvement practices. The project focuses on translating complex institutional expectations into practical tools that students and early-career researchers can confidently use.
The final toolkit will support research and public engagement activity across disciplines, contributing to the University’s commitment to inclusive and socially responsible research. Students will gain experience in collaborative project work, stakeholder engagement, ethical communication, and resource design while contributing to a real institutional output with lasting impact.
This project is suitable for students from all subject areas and particularly welcomes those interested in communication, education, healthcare, social impact, design, or public engagement.
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Sponsors: Eilidh Harris & Shruti Narayanswamy, IELLI and Rachel McEwan, Careers
Ready to level-up your skills and employability? This project invites a STEP team to explore an exciting, game-based approach to developing graduate attributes at ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø. Inspired by Dundee & Angus College’s innovative Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) Meta-Skills Framework, the project will pilot playful, role-play-game based workshops to develop key skills such as teamwork, communication, creativity, problem solving, adaptability and reflective practice. Early outcomes from Dundee and Angus College suggest that the approach strengthens confidence, engagement and skills development awareness among participants.
The STEP team will design and run a small-scale pilot of D&D style meta-skills sessions, gather feedback from participants and evaluate the impact on key skills. The team will then analyse findings and develop recommendations on whether this approach could be adopted in ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø.
This is a unique opportunity to investigate how experiential learning and structured play can support the development of graduate attributes. You will gain hands-on experience in educational design, facilitation, evaluation and project management, while also engaging with a creative and evolving practice within the higher education sector.
If you enjoy collaborative storytelling, creative problem solving, or exploring new ways to enhance the student experience at ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø, roll for initiative and apply!
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Sponsors: Dr Orhan Elmaz, School of Modern Languages
How can digital approaches help remote postgraduate students, e.g., on the online MSc programme in Global Digital Humanities, feel meaningfully included in the research culture of the University? This STEP project invites a team of undergraduate students to investigate that question and develop practical, inclusive proposals for digitally enabled research engagement.
Working as a remote team, students will map current barriers to participation for online learners, review examples of effective practice, and co-design a small suite of event concepts and engagement models that are accessible, scalable, and rooted in EDI principles. These may include hybrid or online research talks, asynchronous discussion formats, student-facing digital resources, and low-cost ways of building a stronger sense of belonging and intellectual community.
The project will produce actionable recommendations for the University and contribute to enhancement of the student experience by helping staff think more strategically about inclusion, participation, and research culture in digital spaces. For participating students, STEP offers a valuable opportunity to develop Graduate Attributes through collaborative project work, research, digital communication, problem solving, and reflective practice in response to a real institutional challenge.
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Sponsors: Dr Gregory Tate and Dr Katie Garner, School of English
The aim of this project is to build closer links between the work of the university, particularly the School of English, and the history and culture of the local area. Fife has over 500 years of rich literary heritage, in English and in Scots, but at the moment the diverse work of Fife writers is relatively under-represented in the university’s research and teaching. The team of student researchers on this project will start to address this under-representation by using independent research skills to study the literary histories of two specific locations in Fife: Cupar and the East Neuk villages.
Using libraries, archives, and online resources, and establishing contacts with local researchers and organisations, the team will compile information about specific writers and about broader literary networks and movements in the two locations. The student researchers will then work within their team to draft and finalise the project’s outputs (a webpage and a short report). The findings of their research will directly inform how the School of English engages with Fife’s literary heritage in the future.
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Sponsor: Dr Emily Hanson, School of Art History
We seek a wide range of voices, from within and outwith art history, to contribute to the outreach and legacy connected to a multi-site, multi-year exhibition that explores disability in Scottish collections. STEP students will have the exciting opportunity to design outreach initiatives that help maximise impact, inclusion, and accessibility.
Phenomenal Bodies: Exploring Disability in Scottish Academic Collections is a project led by Drs Emily Hanson and Billy Rough in the School of Art History at the University of ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø. It aims to change how we think about and interact with historical images and ideas of the human body, with a strong focus on inclusion and accessibility. From 2025 to 2027, the project will present a series of exhibitions across several Scottish universities. These displays will highlight historical collections and are being developed to be accessible to as many people as possible. They are shaped by ongoing collaboration with individuals and communities who bring a wide range of experiences and views about the body and disability. By looking at these collections through the lenses of inclusivity and wellbeing, Phenomenal Bodies encourages conversation and learning across different fields and communities.
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Sponsors: Jason König, School of Classics
This project is designed to lay the foundations for an online heritage mapping initiative for the E4 long-distance hiking path, in collaboration with the European Hiking Federation (ERA) and Anavasi mapping in Greece. The first phase of that collaboration involves a pilot project on the sections of the route that run through the Peloponnese in Greece. The aim is to produce a series of approximately 50 ‘stories’, commissioned from a wide range of contributors, including academic experts, creative practitioners, and members of local community groups, to be released weekly during 2027; each of them will celebrate and explore a different aspect of the history and heritage of specific stretches of the route, with the goal of providing accessible but in-depth narratives that go beyond the material that is currently available online. We define heritage broadly, ranging from the archaeology and history of ancient Greece, to oral histories from the 20th century, to environmental and botanical legacy. We are looking for a team of students to conduct some initial research on available models for online heritage mapping, and to produce a series of heritage stories that will feature on the website.
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Sponsors - Sonja Heinrich, School of Biology
Citizen science involves volunteers from the general public who help collect observations of the natural world. Citizen science initiatives have become powerful companion approaches to dedicated scientific research, particularly in areas where access and resources for scientists are limited. Citizen science is often facilitated by bespoke apps where observations can be easily recorded with a smart phone and uploaded to an online database. While the app might provide individual citizen scientists with feedback on their observations, there is no easy way to track how one’s own observations compare with those of others or contribute to greater scientific understanding. Your mission, should you accept it, is to develop a simple and transferable analytical pipeline that takes citizen scientists’ observations and turns them into sharable, impactful and easily accessible graphical summaries. So your task is to help close the feedback loop by turning individual observations into collective scientific outputs that connect the citizen scientist with the science.
The workflow examples will be based on freely available iNaturalist data from the polar regions and will link to a previous STEP project on “Planning an Arctic Bioblitz” as well as ongoing collaborations with citizen scientists in the Antarctic.
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Sponsors: Dr Kirsty Ross, Computer Science
St Andrew Software Service (SASS) was established in the School of Computer Science in August 2025, as a mechanism to create paid employment opportunities for students in the School, whilst solving industrial challenges for our partners. This STEP project will explore three angles. (1) undertaking market research into similar offerings at other institutions (2) create a brand identity for SASS and associated marketing materials and (3) create a business canvas model to enable SASS to scale sustainably.