We are delighted to announce an official partnership between My-Thesis and the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies (CAGS) — Association canadienne pour les études supérieures.

CAGS is Canada’s national organisation providing leadership, fostering community, and promoting collaboration to advance excellence in graduate education, research, and scholarship. Since its foundation in 1962, CAGS has become a leading voice for graduate education in Canada, bringing together universities and research institutions from across the country.

Its mission strongly complements that of My-Thesis. CAGS supports the development of individuals who, through scholarship, research and innovation, contribute to the flourishing of societies in Canada and internationally. Increasingly, that means not only producing excellent research, but also being able to explain why that research matters.

Research needs to be communicated

Graduate researchers develop extraordinary depth of expertise. Yet the ability to communicate that expertise clearly to people outside a highly specialised field is a different skill — and one that is increasingly important both within and beyond academia.

Researchers must be able to explain complex ideas to colleagues, funders, employers, policymakers, industry partners and the wider public. Spoken communication therefore deserves to be recognised as an important part of graduate education rather than simply an optional extra.

This is one of the reasons competitions such as the Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) have become so successful. Asking researchers to explain years of work in just three minutes requires clarity, confidence and a deep understanding of what is genuinely important about their research.

Many CAGS member institutions participate in 3MT and related research communication initiatives, producing thousands of compelling presentations by graduate researchers across an extraordinary range of disciplines.

Giving graduate research a longer life

One of the challenges with research presentation competitions is that excellent talks can quickly disappear from view after the event itself.

My-Thesis was created to change that.

By cataloguing research presentations and making them searchable by researcher, institution, discipline and topic, My-Thesis gives these presentations a life beyond the competition or event at which they were originally delivered.

A three-minute presentation can become more than a moment on a stage. It can become part of a researcher’s professional profile: something that can be discovered by potential collaborators, employers, students and other researchers.

For universities, this also creates an opportunity to showcase the breadth of graduate research taking place across their institution.

Showcasing Canadian graduate researchers

Through our partnership with CAGS, we look forward to showcasing presentations from graduate researchers across Canada and helping make their work more discoverable internationally.

CAGS represents around 69 universities and research institutions, creating an exceptional community of graduate education, scholarship and innovation.

Many of these institutions already place considerable emphasis on research communication. Our aim is to complement that work by providing a platform through which students can demonstrate those skills publicly and retain a lasting record of what they have achieved.

Over time, we hope that participation will extend well beyond competition finalists. Our broader ambition is that every graduate researcher should have the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to communicate their research clearly and engagingly.

From research output to researcher profile

Academic careers have traditionally been documented primarily through written outputs: publications, theses, conference abstracts and CVs. These remain essential, but they capture only part of what a researcher can do.

The ability to stand in front of an audience and explain a difficult idea clearly is also an important scholarly and professional skill.

My-Thesis profiles are designed to make that capability visible.

A searchable presentation allows someone encountering a researcher for the first time to hear them explain their own work, in their own words. In just a few minutes, it can communicate expertise, enthusiasm, clarity and confidence in ways that are difficult to capture on a conventional CV.

For students moving into careers outside academia, where the ability to communicate complex information to non-specialists is frequently essential, this may be particularly valuable.

A shared commitment to graduate education

The partnership between CAGS and My-Thesis reflects a shared belief that graduate education should prepare researchers not only to generate knowledge, but also to communicate it.

We are enormously pleased to be working with CAGS and its member institutions, and we look forward to highlighting the extraordinary diversity of graduate research taking place across Canada.

Most importantly, we hope the partnership will help create more opportunities for graduate researchers to be seen, be heard and be discovered.

To find out more about the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies, visit CAGS.ca.

One of the reasons for this platform is to not only provide an authentic voice on new cutting-edge research, but also showcase presentation skills which will become a premium in the changing graduate world. But orally presenting your research to an audience is also a valuable learning experience. A new case study from Swansea University suggests that 3MT is more than a public speaking exercise. It can produce measurable changes in how postgraduate researchers understand, present and value their own work.

Writing for the Researcher Education and Development Scholarship Conference, (which is edited by Dr Kay Guccione)  Dr Teresa Phipps and Dr Emily Lowthian describe their findings from Swansea University’s 2024 3MT programme. Their central question was simple but important: does taking part in 3MT actually improve doctoral researchers’ confidence and communication skills, or does it merely appear to do so?

To answer this, they followed 19 doctoral researchers through the competition process, collecting survey data at three stages: the initial information and training session, after the qualifying round, and after the university-wide final. Their approach combined quantitative survey questions with open-ended reflections, allowing them to measure change while also capturing the more personal experience of standing up and speaking about a complex thesis in public.

The findings are striking. By the end of the 3MT process, 80% of participants described themselves as confident presenting their research. There was also a 60 percentage-point increase in participants’ intention to seek out further opportunities to present their work. Students reported improvements in their ability to adapt their communication for different audiences, identify what an audience needs, explain the significance of their research, and communicate the broader value of their thesis.

This matters because 3MT does not simply ask doctoral researchers to speak more quickly. It asks them to think differently. A thesis is usually written for specialists, examined by experts, and developed within a highly technical scholarly context. 3MT requires the researcher to step outside that frame and ask: What is the core idea? Why does it matter? Who needs to understand it? What would make someone outside my field care?

That process appears to help researchers see the “big picture” of their own work. Several participants reflected that the competition helped them summarise their thesis, relate it to different audiences, and step outside their comfort zone. For some, especially those for whom English was a second language or who had limited previous presenting experience, the process was challenging but valuable.

One of the most interesting findings is that increased confidence did not mean the disappearance of nerves. Participants still described anxiety, concern about getting the presentation right, and uncertainty about whether they had pitched their talk at the correct level. But this is precisely what makes the study useful. Confidence in communication is not the same as effortless performance. It is often built through the experience of doing something difficult, receiving feedback, and discovering that anxiety and achievement can coexist.

The study also found a more modest increase in enjoyment of presenting research. This may reflect the fact that those who choose to enter 3MT may already be relatively open to research dissemination. But it also points to a more realistic understanding of researcher development. Not everyone needs to become a natural performer. The aim is not to turn every doctoral researcher into a polished public speaker, but to help them become clearer, more adaptable and more confident communicators.

For universities, the Swansea case study offers an important lesson. 3MT works best when treated not simply as a competition, but as a structured development programme. At Swansea, participants received training, analysed previous presentations, took part in qualifying rounds, and received one-to-one feedback. Following the study, the university has further strengthened support around script development, audience awareness and public speaking coaching.

This is where graduate presenations have wider significance for postgraduate education. Doctoral researchers are increasingly expected to explain their work beyond the academy: to funders, employers, policymakers, industry partners, schools, charities, media organisations and the wider public. Yet conventional doctoral training still places most emphasis on written outputs: the thesis, journal articles, grant applications and conference abstracts. These remain essential, but they do not cover the full range of communication skills researchers need.

A three-minute talk is not a simplified thesis. Done well, it is a disciplined act of translation. It demands clarity without distortion, accessibility without trivialisation, and confidence without jargon. The Swansea study provides useful evidence that this kind of training can change not only how doctoral researchers present, but how they think about the value and audience for their work.

For my-thesis.org, these findings reinforce why short research talks deserve to be preserved, indexed and made discoverable. A 3MT presentation is often the most accessible public expression of a doctoral project. It captures the researcher’s voice, the central question, the significance of the work and the human story behind the research. Yet too many of these talks disappear into institutional webpages, YouTube channels or one-off competition archives where they are difficult to find after the event.

If 3MT helps researchers become more confident communicators, then platforms like my-thesis.org can help ensure that their communication has a life beyond the competition. Making talks searchable by topic, institution, speaker and keyword means that the value created through 3MT training is not lost. It allows future students, supervisors, employers, collaborators and members of the public to discover research through the people who are doing it.

The Swansea study shows that 3MT can have a tangible impact on postgraduate confidence, self-efficacy and communication behaviour. But it also shows something deeper: doctoral researchers benefit when they are asked to explain why their work matters, not only to examiners, but to the wider world.

Three minutes may be brief. The impact can last much longer.