Month: June 2022

Three Minute Thesis Competition 2022

On Thursday 16 June, Birkbeck doctoral students took part in the 2022 Three Minute Thesis Competition. Meiyun Meng was the overall winner and received a £500 prize.
From left to right: Hannah Reeves (people’s choice); Carlo Palombo; Meiyun Meng (overall winner); Tom Nealon; Marie Houghton; Doyin Olorunfemi (runner up); Fengzhi Zhao.

2022 3MT Competition

On Thursday 16 June around 60 people attended the Birkbeck Three Minute Thesis Competition in the Clore Lecture Theatre. This was the fourth time the competition has been run at Birkbeck and the first time since 2019. The seven contestants displayed excellent presentational skills to convey their research in a concise and engaging manner, all managing to conclude with just a few seconds to spare. As always at Birkbeck, there was a wide range of subjects from how cross-sectional data can help cure cancer to the experience of flat sharing among the over-30s.

Winner: Meiyun Meng

After the judges had watched the candidates make their presentations, Meiyun Meng (Department of Geography) was chosen as the overall winner for her lively and engaging talk ‘Individualising life courses: Home-making of highly educated women in Shenzhen, China’. Meiyun is in her third year as a doctoral researcher in Geography.

Runner up: Doyin Olorunfemi

In addition to the overall winner, the judges awarded a £250 runner up prize to Doyin Olorunfemi (Department of Management) for her talk on ‘From Selling to Venturing’.

People’s Prize Winner

The overall winner and runner up were chosen by a panel of 3 Birkbeck experts but the audience also played a key role and were asked to use their votes to select a People’s Choice winner. This prize was awarded to Hannah Reeves (Department of Psychosocial Studies) for her talk ‘Crossbones Graveyard: remembering the dead, or breathing with them?‘

2022 3MT Talks

A list of all the competitors and their talks is provided below.

Doyin Olorunfemi ‘From Selling to Venturing’
Marie Houghton ‘Can home and happiness be found living in a house share after the age of 30?’
Hannah Reeves ‘Crossbones Graveyard: remembering the dead, or breathing with them?’
Meiyun Meng ‘Individualising life courses: Home-making of highly educated women in Shenzhen, China’
Fengzhi Zhao ‘A Tale of Two Cosmopolitan Shanghai(s)’
Tom Nealon ‘Inferring Time Varying Processes from Cross-Sectional Data’
Carlo Palombo ‘On the prohibition of nudity’

The PhD Network in-person Social

Our very first social since what feels like forever!

Most of us in this PhD Network have only seen and talked to each other virtually – over our shut-up and write group – and while strong bonds have been formed, it is finally time to organise the get together we have all been waiting for and quite frankly deserve.

For our new PhD cohorts, this is a great opportunity to meet some seasoned PhD students and grab as many tips and trick from them as possible! As such alumni are also welcome.

But it’s also a chance to get to know the group and who we are, and what the PhD Network does and how it can help you in your studies. PhD study can be very isolating and lonely and it takes a while to navigate all the hurdles that will inevitably come your way – we all know of this, trialled through it – but thankfully together, we can get through it in one whole-ish piece 🙂

I have chosen Coram’s fields as our location as they run a fully facilitated and supervised under 5’s playgroup from 9:30am- noon weekdays – it gives our PhD parents the option to join without worrying if they can or cannot bring children etc

It is a really nice space, with a cafe, and lots of lovely gardens.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to secure a budget for this picnic – so please do bring your own food and drinks. We will have a large blanket and some bits and bobbins to nibble but nothing substantial. I hope to see lots of you there. I am -fingers crossed – hoping for good weather and I know I will have good company 🙂