Festival of PhD Research, 9-10 May 2024, Belfast campus.
Festival Overview
The Festival of PhD Research 2025 will take place on Wednesday 4 and Thursday 5 June 2025 in our Derry-Londonderry campus. We look forward to welcoming our PhD Researchers from across all the campuses to this celebration and showcase of research excellence from our PhD community.
The Festival will open with a keynote followed by a programme of presentations, posters and practice based exhibitions. Also included in the programme is the Bake Your PhD competition and a photography competition. Prizes will be awarded later in the month at an PhD Awards Presentation & 3MT Final on the Coleraine campus.
A Call for Abstracts will be sent out in February / March 2025.
What the PhD Researchers say about the Festival...
Very well organized, with excellent food and a fantastic chance to network with staff and students from other Faculties.
Very well organised, constructive and positive atmosphere. Food was great, things moved along at a really pleasant pace with great consideration for breaks inbetween sessions
The atmosphere was great for first time presenting, very welcoming and friendly. Wonderful to meet people from so many different disciplines and to gain insight into how PhD research progresses / evolves. The food and refreshments were top notch and helped make it feel like a celebration. The guest speaker was great fun too.
Well organised, provided great opportunities for PhD Researchers at UU to not only present their own research but also to engage with the research of their peers.
I liked that I could present some of my findings and answer people's questions. As well as meeting people and networking with people.
I really enjoyed that we were able to get together as PhD researchers and celebrate each other's achievements. The bake your PhD was especially fun!
Good opportunity to get all researchers on campus and present in an informal and friendly atmosphere as a practice for other conferences. The addition of the 3 minutes was great as it allowed researchers to deliver their project in a short period of time which allowed them to reach new audiences/make new connections without the need to present for a long period of time to audiences who aren't always engaged or interested in the topic.
Very friendly and supportive environment for researchers to network, present and gain feedback
Programme
The annual Festival of PhD Research is open to ALL PhD Researchers, from any campus and at any stage of their PhD.
The programme includes :
- Key note
- PhD Presentations
- Posters
- Exhibitions by practise-based PhD Researchers
- 'Bake Your PhD' competition
- Photography competition
- Doctoral Society Belfast Initiatives
Bake Your PhD
Researchers can bake anything (e.g. cake or other baked goods) that visually depicts any aspect of their research (e.g. from the physical samples, findings, methods employed in the project, or the research topic concepts and ideas).
Tips for success
- Think about the overarching concepts and ideas in your research, can you make an analogy of them with cake?
- It is not restricted to cake, we will also accept other edible baked goods; biscuits, pies, breads etc
- Try to incorporate your research into more than just the icing on the cake.
- While non-edible decorations are allowed, why not try making edible decorations to really impress the judges?!
- Think about your presentation to the judges. Impress them with a story or maybe incorporate moving parts or a demonstration to your presentation.
- Remember you don't have to represent all your research in one cake, pick your favourite or most interesting part and have fun with that!
The Photo Competition
The annual photo competition will feature in the 2025 Festival of PhD Research.
Details to be announced.
Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition 2025
We are delighted to be hosting Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition at Ulster for the eighth year running.
The live 3MT Final will take place on Thursday 19 June 12-2pm on the Belfast campus.
Prizes/Awards
The Doctoral College will also host the PhD Awards Presentation, featuring the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Final later in June in the Belfast campus from 12pm-2pm. Date to be confirmed.
The awards and prizes include:
- Best Poster - one prize per research theme
- Outstanding PhD Thesis Award - by Faculty
- Bake Your PhD Winner & Runner Up
- Photo Competition Winner & People's Choice Award
- 3MT Winner, Runner Up and People's Choice Award