Three Minute Thesis 2018

Registration closed for entering the 3MT competition.


3mt-logo

An 80,000 word thesis would take 9 hours to present.

Your time limit… 3 minutes.


For the second year running, the University of Brighton will be participating in the national Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition. Hosted by Vitae, the 3MT invites doctoral students to explain their research and its significance to a non-specialist audience in just three minutes, using only one slide.

3MT 2018 Judge's 1st prize £400, runner-up £200. People's Choice prize £250

The 3MT is not only an exciting and fun competitive event, it offers an excellent opportunity for doctoral students to develop their communication and public engagement skills. When we ran the competition and our accompanying workshops last year, a number of students in the thick of their thesis commented on how 3MT preparation helped them take a beneficial back step and re-focus on the essence and importance of their research.

The prize money is also nice! Our 3MT competition will be held as part of our Festival of Postgraduate Research on 7 June. We’ll be awarding £400 to the judges’ prize winner and £200 to the runner up, while £250 goes to the speaker winning the most audience votes cast on the day. And if our winner goes on to compete at the national level, they could win a grant of £3K.

If you’d like to participate in our university competition, please register online by 12pm (midday) on Friday 18 May 2018 by clicking the button below.

For a range of tips, guidance and to view 3MT videos, check out our resource pack:

And be sure to familiarise yourself with the competition rules, judging criteria and eligibility criteria.

The UK final takes place on Monday 17 September 2018 in Birmingham. Doctoral candidates who have not yet had their viva at the time of our local competition on Thursday 7 June will be eligible to participate. Our winner will automatically go through to Vitae’s online semi-final held during July and August.

Want to know more? Read all about last year’s Brighton event and watch the 30 minute video of our nail-biting live final here. How nail-biting? Take a look at the presentation from our double-winner (judges’ and people’s choice prizes), Lujain Mirza, starting at around 23.30 minutes – and don’t forget to breathe!