Dr Sinead Rhodes has collaborated with colleagues from across the disciplinary spectrum to create a unique programme of practical support for neurodivergent children and young people backed by the latest research.
Failure Modes of Engineering (FeME): a network for future inclusivity, sustainability and global impact
Dr Encarni Medina-Lopez (Senior Lecturer in Ocean Observation, School of Engineering) and Dr Agnessa Spanellis (Senior Lecturer in Systems Thinking, Business School) are working together in a collaborative project between SHAPE and STEM colleagues which aims to tackle the inequality of the climate change crisis by creating networks for solution co-creation with those who are impacted the most. By applying engineering concepts through a SHAPE lens, they are discovering new and innovative ways to make this happen.
We’re driving this human-centred engineering research, which is exciting and innovative. We are all learning a lot from it by looking at different opportunities and expanding some areas of work that are arising through the FeME project, and looking at the long-term future. That’s a part of my research that really excites me and brings out something new that I really want to nurture.
Working with Encarni has been amazing and bringing in different methodologies and different views on the discipline is always illuminating and allows me to do things that I wouldn't have otherwise been able to do within the boundaries of my discipline.
The Inequality of Climate Change Impact
There is substantial evidence that climate change disproportionally impacts women, children and underrepresented groups, especially in the Global South. To challenge this, a new interdisciplinary project team involving academics with expertise across SHAPE and STEM disciplines – including engineering, business, education, and psychology – have come together to develop a network-building project for future inclusivity, sustainability, and global impact in addressing the climate crisis.
The Failure Modes of Engineering (FeME) project team, with researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Heriot-Watt, is exploring how engineering solutions for climate change and biodiversity loss can become more inclusive by tackling inclusivity in current engineering practices so that no one is left behind. The overarching goal of the project is to create a broad consensus that climate change challenges are multifaceted and that the climate crisis cannot be solved within a single discipline. The project also aims to bring women, children, and underserved communities in the Global South into the decision-making process to co-create climate action solutions.
A Lightbulb moment in SHAPE and STEM collaboration
The FeME project team members met through the University of Edinburgh Climate Leaders programme, which was created to help women researching climate change build ambitious interdisciplinary projects; early connections had also been built during a previous inequality in engineering networking project.
The team identified the EPSRC Tomorrow’s Engineering Research Challenges as an opportunity to approach inequality in the climate change crisis by collaborating across the SHAPE and STEM disciplines. A co-creation workshop allowed space for inter-disciplinary discussions which led to the team’s “light bulb” moment – when a social science colleague asked the engineers, “how do engineers speak about failure?”.
The STEM colleagues automatically thought of failure modes, a widespread technique used in engineering design. Together with their SHAPE colleagues they designed a project that would use this traditional systems engineering method to better link researchers, industry, and communities to explore the complex relationship between engineering, nature, and society.
Funding success and project launch
The FeME application was successful in securing £2.2 million from the EPSRC and the project began in early 2025. In September 2025 the team ran their first networking workshop event, the FeME Climate Challenge, when more than 60 participants from 18 different countries came together for two days of collaboratively working through the challenges of the network’s four core climate change impact themes: transport and logistics, energy systems, water crisis, and biodiversity. The event was attended by representatives from many different communities, including government, research and industry, with strong representation from the Global South.
Moving forward with FeME project and beyond
The FeME team continues to move forward with the project and are currently organising partner discovery visits as well as seed funding opportunities and further networking events. They plan to use this project to create a template for other networks and are having discussions with partners in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. At the same time, the team will continue driving their human-centred interdisciplinary engineering research.
The team are continuously learning by working together – in particular, STEM colleagues are finding that by looking at different aspects of their own work through the SHAPE lens, they can collectively work towards innovative solutions that would not be possible if limiting collaborations to within the engineering field.
Other team members
Dr Sue Widdicombe (School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences), Professor Laura Colucci-Gray (Moray House School of Education and Sport), Professor Caroline Gauchotte-Lindsay (University of Glasgow), and Dr Christa Searle (Heriot-Watt Business School).
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