Competition winners - Festival of Doctoral Research 2023

Last week the Graduate School and the PGR Super Reps welcomed over 140 postgraduate research students and staff to an exciting hybrid day of research presentations and competitions.

The theme for this year’s festival was Research Impact. During the day festival goers were keen to attend a keynote by Professor Mark Reed from Fast Track Impact and presentations, long and short, delivered by PGR students from across the University. There was also the opportunity to view a large range of research posters and vote on their favourite thesis bakes and images.

View the competition entries

PGR student host Kris Nolan opened the Festival and then each session was led by one of the day’s 5 other charismatic PGR hosts - Lena Sloot, Ajibola Oyebamiji, Ritah Namaganda, Thanusah V Manohor and facilitating the online crowd was Nadine Sadler.

During lunch, staff members from the Students' Union, Careers and Wellbeing were all on hand to offer advice and information about their services. Attendees were encouraged to enjoy the hot lunch and to get voting on the Bake Your Thesis and Visualise Your Thesis competitions. The winners would be announced at the end of the day.

The day ended with a Q&A panel hosted by Ritah Namaganda with questions fired at two of the University’s distinguished Professors, Sarah Charman and Jane Creaton. Speaking first about how their research has had an impact they then went on to answer a plethora of questions from the in-person and online audience.

Headlining the day was the long awaited prize giving and drinks reception. The Professors had, earlier in the week, judged the Poster and Elevator Pitch competitions and were eager to hand out the prizes to the winners.

Thank you to all of the attendees, hosts, presenters, competition entrants and University staff for making this event possible.

Without further ado, here are the Festival’s competition winners:

Poster Competition

• 1st Place - Steven Iorfa
• 2nd Place (joint) - Srinivas Kore
• 2nd Place (joint) - Stella Lugwig

Elevator Pitch Competition

• 1st Place - Sarah Small
• 2nd Place - Allison Gale

Five by Five Competition

• 1st Place - Joanna Pomeroy
• 2nd Place - Rick Payne

Bake Your Thesis Competition

• 1st Place - Anda Solea
• 2nd Place - Sarah Small

Visualise Your Thesis

• 1st Place - Brooke Wain
• 2nd Place - Ruth Venn

Networking My Thesis

• Prize draw winner - Benyamin Ebrahimpour

Congratulations to all the winners for their exceptional contributions! Their dedication to impactful research and creative endeavours has been truly inspiring.

Below, photographs of the winners, who were at the in-person event, being presented with their prizes by the Festival hosts and professors.