Dunlop Green Flash, adidas Samba, Puma States, Reebok Classic, Nike Air Max, or Yeezy 350 … how many would hear in this list the echoes of the broad sweep of global history, from the mid 19th to the early 21st Century? In a recent Research Blog post, a Birkbeck PhD alumnus recounts his long walk from his first pair of adidas in the mid 1980s to a book deal in 2015, via a global industry valued in the billions.
Self-styled sneakerhead, Thomas Turner researched his beloved sports footwear against a changing landscape of society, sport, fashion, industry, and technology – graduating in 2013 with a PhD in History from Birkbeck. To trace the footsteps in history of one of the most culturally rich and economically significant products of our time, the humble sports shoe, step over to the trail on the Research blog:
On Thursday 2 May, Birkbeck doctoral students took part in the 2019 Three Minute Thesis Competition. Gabriella McGrogan was the overall winner and received a £500 prize.
From left to right: Xiaohong Chen; Gabriella McGrogan (overall winner); Colin Del Strother; Janette Leaf (runner up); Malcolm White; Pernelle Lorette (joint people’s choice); Natalie Lancer; Beverley Hayward; Lexter Woodley (joint people’s choice); Abul Hasan; Shailesh Kumar; Soody Gholam. Apologies to Jo Blackwell who is not pictured here.
2019 3MT Competition
On Thursday 2 May around 70 people attended the Birkbeck Three Minute Thesis Competition. This competition honed and tested the presentation skills of the PhD students who took part, and provided an exciting tour of a diverse range of our current doctoral research. Despite only having 3 minutes for each presentation, contestants (representing all Schools at Birkbeck) were able to convey their research in an insightful and meaningful way, and the event provided both celebration and insight arising from their achievements.
This event, which was held in the Clore Lecture Theatre, was the third time the Three Minute Thesis competition has been run at Birkbeck.
Winner: Gabriella McGrogan
During the exciting series of talks from Birkbeck PhD students, Gabriella McGrogan (Department of Law) was chosen as the overall winner for her compelling presentation ‘Against our Community Standards’- “Outsider” Witnessing of Atrocity and Social Media Censorship’. Gabriella is in her first year as a doctoral researcher in Criminology.
Gabriella told us her reaction on winning the competition:
“It was actually quite a shock! I went last, and had spent the short break prior to the competition repeating what I wanted to say over and over. I was a little overwhelmed by the brilliant calibre of all of the other contestants.
Not only was competing an excellent opportunity to practice public speaking (which I find daunting) but winning, and the conversations invoked afterwards, has helped to give me confidence that my work is interesting to a wide audience and may prove important. It has definitely encouraged me to consider how I can present it for public engagement again in the future.
Whilst competing is a little terrifying, the training and support of everyone at BGRS makes the experience much more comfortable – definitely have a go! It has helped me to condense a plethora of ideas and research into a manageable and coherent explanation. It’s also so enjoyable to engage with students from other departments and made me very proud of the diversity and innovation happening at Birkbeck.”
In addition to the overall winner, the judges awarded a £250 runner up prize to Janette Leaf (Department of English and Humanities) for her talk on ‘Locating the Sympathetic Insect’.
The overall winner and runner up were chosen by a panel of 5 Birkbeck experts (one from each of Birkbeck’s Schools) but the audience also played a key role and were asked to use their votes to choose a People’s Choice winner. The People’s prize was awarded jointly to ‘Lexter Woodley’ (Department of Geography) for her talk ‘An exploration on how female breadwinner couples experience and manage their home lives’
and to Pernelle Lorette (Applied Linguistics and Communication) for her presentation ‘How do you think they feel? Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perception of emotion’.
2019 3MT Talks
A list of all the competitors and their talks is provided below.
Abul Hasan ‘Making Sense of Medical Search’
Natalie Lancer ‘Coaching and Personal Growth: Navigating the tensions of undergraduate life’
Colin Del Strother ‘War for the Souls of London’
Lexter Woodley ‘An exploration on how female breadwinner couples experience and manage their home lives’
Jo Blackwell ‘The needs and experiences of young fathers in prison’
Janette Leaf ‘Locating the Sympathetic Insect’
Beverley Hayward ‘Tales from the Creative Toolbox’
Xiaohong Chen ‘Chinese Credit Growth’
Malcolm White ‘The role of catchwords in English late medieval texts’
Pernelle Lorette ‘How do you think they feel? Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perception of emotion’
Shailesh Kumar ‘Quality, Quantity, and Criminal Justice’
Soody Gholami ‘The Unhomely in Post-Imperial British Literature’
Gabriella McGrogan ‘Against our Community Standards’- “Outsider” Witnessing of Atrocity and Social Media Censorship’
