We are delighted to announce a new partnership between My-Thesis and the Irish Universities Association (IUA), the representative voice of Ireland’s research-intensive public universities.

The IUA represents seven universities — Dublin City University, Maynooth University, Trinity College Dublin, University College Cork, University College Dublin, University of Galway and University of Limerick — and works collectively across higher education policy, research, researcher development, engagement and internationalisation.

Together, these universities educate more than 155,000 students, including almost 10,000 PhD candidates, and account for a substantial proportion of Ireland’s university research activity. In 2024, research investment across IUA universities totalled €670 million.

For My-Thesis, this partnership represents an important opportunity to help make the people behind that research more visible.

Great research deserves to be heard

Universities are exceptionally good at recording written academic achievement. Publications, theses, conference papers and qualifications provide a detailed account of what a researcher has produced.

But they reveal much less about whether somebody can explain their research clearly to another person.

That distinction matters.

Graduate researchers increasingly need to communicate beyond their immediate specialism: to colleagues in other disciplines, industry partners, employers, policymakers, funders and members of the public. The ability to take a complex problem and make it understandable without sacrificing its substance is therefore an important part of becoming an effective researcher.

My-Thesis was created to give that skill greater visibility.

Making spoken communication discoverable

Across Ireland, graduate researchers already give excellent presentations through doctoral showcases, conferences, public-engagement events and competitions such as the Three Minute Thesis.

Too often, however, these presentations are transient. A researcher may spend weeks preparing an outstanding explanation of their work, deliver it once, and then see the recording disappear into a university website, video channel or archive where it becomes difficult to find.

My-Thesis provides a different model.

We catalogue graduate research presentations and make them searchable by researcher, institution, subject and topic. This means that an individual presentation can continue to work for the researcher long after the original event has finished.

It becomes part of a visible research profile rather than simply a recording of a past occasion.

Connecting research with opportunity

This matters not only for academic visibility but also for researcher development.

The IUA describes its universities as institutions that nurture talent and create, disseminate and apply knowledge while building partnerships across society and internationally. My-Thesis complements that ambition by providing another route through which the expertise of graduate researchers can be discovered.

A prospective collaborator might find someone working on a related research problem. An employer might encounter a doctoral researcher with precisely the specialist knowledge they need. A journalist or policymaker might discover someone capable of explaining an emerging field. Another student might simply find an inspiring example of what research in that discipline looks like.

In each case, the presentation provides something that a conventional academic profile cannot: the opportunity to hear the researcher explain their own work in their own voice.

Communication as part of researcher development

The partnership also reflects a wider change in how we think about doctoral education.

A PhD develops deep subject expertise, but relatively few doctoral graduates will spend their entire careers communicating solely with specialists in their own discipline. Researchers increasingly operate across disciplinary, professional and organisational boundaries.

Being able to communicate clearly is therefore not separate from research excellence. It is one of the ways research achieves impact.

This is particularly relevant as universities place greater emphasis on transferable skills, researcher careers, public engagement and collaboration beyond academia.

My-Thesis provides a simple way of making one of those capabilities visible and verifiable.

Showcasing Irish graduate research

Our partnership with the Irish Universities Association will help us highlight the extraordinary breadth of research being undertaken by graduate researchers across Ireland.

The IUA already brings together senior leaders in graduate studies and research from across its member universities, creating a strong national network for sharing practice and developing graduate education.

We hope My-Thesis can add another dimension to that work: a shared public space where graduate researchers can showcase not only what they are studying, but also how well they can communicate it.

Over time, our ambition is straightforward.

Every graduate researcher should have the opportunity to produce a concise, accessible explanation of their work — and to have that communication recognised as part of their professional identity.

The partnership with the Irish Universities Association brings us another important step closer to that goal.

We look forward to working with the IUA and its member universities to make Ireland’s graduate research — and the remarkable people carrying it out — more visible to the world.

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.