March 2017 NUI Galway PhD Candidate Awarded Prize at French Contest

Giada Lagana, a final year PhD candidate in the School of Political Science and Sociology at NUI Galway, was recently awarded the Elocution prize at the PhD contest ‘My Thesis in 3 Minutes … in French!’ in Dublin. The event was organised by the Embassy of France in Ireland and set during the month of la Francophonie, which celebrates and promotes French language and cultural diversity.

The contest tasks PhD candidates of all nationalities and all disciplines to present their research project in three minutes in French. This year, 25 competitors coming from seven universities and Institutes of Technology were judged according to several criteria including speech quality, outreaching and speech structure.

NUI Galway were represented by two PhD candidates, Justine Aussant from Zoology who presented her work on microalgae, and Giada Lagana who presented “The European Union and the Northern Ireland Peace Process” winning her one of the three prizes attributed during the contest.

The jury were composed of four experts working in Ireland, all of them having defended a doctoral thesis including: Dr Virginie Gautier, principal investigator at University College Dublin; Dr Rachid Seghrouchni from the Embassy of the Kingdom of Morocco in Ireland; and Dr Michel Dugon and Dr Muriel Grenon, two NUI Galway lecturers from the School of Natural Sciences experienced with public engagement in science.

Stéphane Aymard from the French Embassy in Ireland said: “All presentations were of outstanding quality and participants, of whom 70% were not native speakers, were all successful in speaking clearly and concisely in French while delivering fascinating information on their research. It was great to have doctorate participants from most part of Ireland including NUI Galway, where many staff and students have a strong interest in French values and culture.”

Dr Muriel Grenon, Vice-Dean for Promotion of Science Technology Engineering and Maths at NUI Galway said: “It is a very important and useful skill for researchers to be able to communicate clearly and simply the importance of their work to the public – it is an additional advantage to be able to communicate in multiple languages. Congratulations to Justine and Giada, their participation and Giada’s victory are a credit to the multiple talents of NUI Galway postgraduate students.”

More information can be found at http://www.ambafrance-ie.org/My-Thesis-in-3-minutes-in-French-4407.

-Ends-