Danielle Fatzinger is the current PGR Office Intern and in the third year of her PhD in Celtic & Gaelic, studying late-seventeenth century Gaelic manuscripts written in Kintyre, Argyll, their scribe, and his patrons. In this post, she shares some of the reasons you should consider participating in public engagement competitions and events like Three Minute Thesis and Famelab.

Many postgraduate researchers are on the lookout for CV builders, ways to share their research, and opportunities to develop new skills and improve those they already have. One great way to do this is through public engagement competitions and events, which offer a structured space for PGRs to share their research, often in a way geared towards non-specialist audiences and with networking and engagement opportunities beyond the events themselves.

Two upcoming competitions, Three Minute Thesis (3MT) and Famelab, are great examples of this, and they’re both currently accepting participants! (See the bottom of the post for more information about these events.)

But why should you join? And what if you’re unsure if you’re qualified?

Keep reading for the perks of participating in Public Engagement Competitions and Events, including advice and thoughts for those who may be on the fence about whether or not to join.

It’s a Structured Engagement Opportunity

It can be difficult for some PGRs to locate engagement opportunities, and it can require doing much of the background work yourself. 3MT, Famelab, and other academic competitions provide a structured opportunity to work on your engagement skills, so you can just focus on the practice and presentation.

You Build Skills and Your CV

Post-degree opportunities are important considerations for PGRs, and building your skills and CV with concrete examples (and even video evidence!) is one result of participation in public engagement events and competitions. For Three Minute Thesis, skills you’ll be using include:

• Bravery – Okay, you may not list this one on your CV, but for many of us, presenting is terrifying and participating in Three Minute Thesis or Famelab will require flexing our bravery muscles. This is something useful to be able to do (think: future work presentations or conferences).

• Communication – Effective communication is a skill required in every job in some form, and these competitions are a good way to practice targeting your communication to a specific type of audience and producing non-academic writing/scripts.

• Public Speaking – The ability to stand up in front of an audience and say things without too much fuss is a good one.

• Confidence – This is tied to both public speaking and bravery. Building confidence in a skill requires practicing it, so participating in this event, and practicing your public engagement and speaking skills, will help build your confidence for the next opportunity that comes along.

• Explaining Complex Ideas – This relates to communication: taking a lot of information and complicated concepts and explaining them effectively is, however, its own skill. PGRs spend their time with information, and its important to practice the ever-valuable skill of turning that information into something easy for others understand.

• Planning – Besides research knowledge, participation in these competitions requires planning. What will be on your slide (for 3MT) or what props will you use (for Famelab)? What will you say, and how will you say it? How will you practice and know you’re ready?

It’s Okay if You Don’t Win – You can still be Successful

It may seem counter-intuitive, but these academic competitions are relatively low-stakes. Hear me out…success in participating doesn’t necessarily come from being one of the winners. Sure, winning is great, and it comes with prizes and perks. However, the challenge is simpler than that: can you explain your research in a way a non-general audience will understand and find engaging? That’s a reachable target, particularly if you’re new to public engagement. Plus, you’ll receive feedback, which will give you advice for continuing to hone your skills as well as note the things you did well.

Practice on public engagement in a friendly setting and feedback from experts? It’s a win-win.

You’ll Walk Away with Networking Material

Participating in these competitions will give you something invaluable: motivation to write a short, accessible script explaining your research that can be re-used and updated for other events. Thinking about your research through the different lens will prep you for talking to those outside of your cohort, lab, colleagues, and other peers. Industry, NGOs, researchers who aren’t specialists in your field, interviewers for jobs, and even friends and family who ask about your research will receive an easy-to-understand answer, developed at least in part by preparation for the competition, and such effective communication can go a long way.

Plus, if videos of your presentation are available (as they are for Three Minute Thesis), you can take the experience at the event or competition and share it again and again with others who want a quick introduction to what you’re doing. You may even discover that your research is interesting to more people than you thought it would be.

You Realise that You are qualified (yes, you, and yes, really)

Every UofG PGR has a different set of knowledge and skills and a different research project, and as a result, we are all uniquely qualified to talk about our own research, no matter the stage in the process. Results or no results, 1st year or 3rd year, nobody else is spending the same amount of time on the exact same topic with the exact same perspective. It’s also important to remember that your peers and supervisors/PIs believe you are qualified to do the work you’re doing: the next step is to believe it yourself.

If you decide to participate in a public engagement event or competition, whether that’s Three Minute Thesis, Famelab, Impact in 60 Seconds, an invited talk, or something else, you will be sharing something unique. And that’s pretty cool.

Famelab was started in 2005 in the UK by Cheltenham Science Festival and since its inception, over 10,000 scientists and engineers from 31 countries have participated. The result is a vibrant global network of scientists and engineers engaging with international audiences. To participate, you must prepare a 3-minute lay presentation about science and research you are enthusiastic about using whatever means best fit your presentation style. The Glasgow training and information session will take place on February 6th, so please register online to attend. The deadline for entrants is 28 February 2020.

Three Minute Thesis is an academic competition for research students which challenges them to present their research to a non-specialist audience in three minutes with the use of only one slide. Registration is currently live for UofG’s 2020 competition, and an information session will take place on 19 February 2020. The deadline for entrants in 21 February 2020. More information, including on how to register, can be found on the competition’s webpage.

Some public engagement events (without the competition element) include Bright Club Glasgow (which is comedy!) and PubhD.