Birmingham Three Minute Thesis Competition

The average PhD thesis would take nine hours to present.

Our presenters have... three minutes

Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) is a research communication competition developed by the University of Queensland in 2008, in which doctoral researchers have just three minutes to deliver an engaging presentation on their thesis topic, its originality and its significance.

Participating in the competition helps postgraduate researchers to develop academic, presentation and research communication skills, as well as offering valuable training in public engagement.

With universities across the world now holding their own 3MT competitions, we were delighted to run the first University of Birmingham 3MT competition in September 2013; over 50 of our doctoral researchers battled it for a place in the final ten and the chance to impress the judges for a £1,000 travel bursary.

The competition was won by Pete West-Oram, a PhD candidate researching global healthcare injustice in the Department of Philosophy. Runner-up, and recipient of a £500 travel bursary, was Marea Sing from Birmingham Business School, whose research focuses on economic development and macroeconomic policy.

Guest Brian Weetman, Managing Director of Heartland Insurance Group, tweeted to acknowledge that all our finalists were ‘inspirational’ and gave ‘ten winning presentations,’ but Pete’s gritty delivery and strong visuals stood out. Pete described the competition as a ‘fun way to take a break from the fine detail of writing up and to spend some time on the general themes of my thesis.’

Pete went forward to compete against 3MT winners from other universities across the world in the Universitas 21 virtual Three Minute Thesis final, which was judged in October 2013.

 

Our 2013 3MT finalists and winners

Birmingham 3MT 2013 winner: Pete West-Oram, Department of Philosophy

 

Birmingham 3MT 2013 runner-up: Marea Sing, Birmingham Business School

 

Other Birmingham 3MT finalists:

  •  Emma Login (Ironbridge Institute)

 

  •  Laura Bowen (Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences)

 

  • Karin Diaconu (Health and Population Sciences) 

 

  •   Mary Dawood (Birmingham Business School)

 

  •  Maryam Najafian (Electronic, Electrical and Computer Engineering)

 

  •  Rajeev Desai (Cancer Sciences)

 

  •  Rosalind Davies (Chemical Engineering/ Chemistry)

 

  •  Ryan Brindle (Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences)

 

Preparing a 3MT

3MT is all about effectively communicating the originality and importance of a research project in three minutes, to an intelligent but non-expert lay audience. Speakers should avoid dense information or specialised jargon, but instead distil their ideas in order to guide the audience through your work and leave a lasting impression.

Presentations are judged according to the following three criteria:

  • Comprehension: does the presentation help the audience understand to understand the research and its importance?
  • Engagement: Does the speaker capture and maintain the audience’s attention? Do they want to know more?
  • Communication: Was the language used appropriate for a non-specialist audience? Was the presentation style confident and engaging? Was the PowerPoint slide clear and concise and add productively to the presentation?

Simon Clews from the University of Melbourne has prepared helpful guidelines for Making the Most of Your Three Minutes.

Inger Mewburn (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, RMIT) has also developed a presentation about the 3MT

To find out more about the Birmingham 3MT competition, please contact Dr Holly Prescott: h.prescott@bham.ac.uk

For more details on the Universitas 21 virtual 3MT competition, please contact Dr Gemma Marakas: g.marakas@bham.ac.uk