Principal's Medal Léa Weimann

I should now like to introduce the Principal’s Medal. This award was inaugurated thirteen years ago with a gift from three anonymous donors and is supported by Ede and Ravenscroft, believed to be the oldest firm of tailors and robe-makers in the world. The award of the Principal’s Medal recognises students who display exceptional endeavour and achievement during their time at St Andrews. The awards are open to final-year undergraduates and postgraduates in any discipline, and the achievements celebrated are both academic and extra-curricular.

For the academic year 2020 to 2021, the Principal’s Medal was awarded to three outstanding students, and this celebration enables us to bestow the medal in the customary way. Today we recognise Léa Weimann, who graduated with a Master of Arts with Honours in International Relations and Sustainable Development – and I am pleased to note that she received a first-class degree.

Léa is, first and foremost, an outstandingly accomplished scholar, and she graduated with one of the most distinguished academic profiles in her entire cohort. But Léa tirelessly goes above and beyond to put her insightful theoretical understandings of politics and sustainability into practice through environmental activism which is as compelling as it is inventive, inspiring, and impactful. Environmental work for Léa is not about assuming positions of responsibility: instead, it is a deeply felt mission and attitude that she integrates into every area of her life, whilst seeking also to motivate others to become increasingly mindful of their relationship to the planet and its resources. To that end, Léa runs an advocacy website, Eco Activists, which includes everything from vegan recipes to self-produced podcasts, and in 2020 Léa launched her first book – a collection of environmental poetry entitled Dear Earth. 

Léa puts passion into practice through her significant organising activities: she took a leading role in organising climate protests in St Andrews, including the Line in the Sand demonstration in 2019. And in the 2020 to 2021 academic year, Léa served both as the Environment Officer at the Students’ Association and as an adviser to the University’s Environmental Sustainability Board. The Chair of that Board, Professor Sir Ian Boyd FRS, the former Chief Scientific Officer at the UK Government’s Department for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, and a member of the University’s School of Biology, wrote in the nomination that Léa ‘has the capacity to capture the imagination of other students and has achieved this through organisation, political intelligence, and hard work.’

Léa is currently reading for the degree of Master of Laws in Global Environment and Climate Change Law at the University of Edinburgh, and it will come as no surprise that she underpins that with continuing public service. Léa still often supports St Andrews, including through the return of the Line in the Sand demonstration ahead of COP26 last autumn, but she works much more broadly: as a Greenpeace Youth Speaker in Scottish primary schools; at the Scottish Parliament where she presented recommendations on the Scottish Good Food Nation Bill at the end of March; and, at the beginning of this month, as a youth delegate to the United Nations Stockholm+50 Conference,  marking fifty years since the publication of the Stockholm Declaration on the Environment. 

Léa, in recognition of all that you achieved both academically and personally during your time as an undergraduate, it gives me great pleasure to bestow upon you the Principal’s Medal.