Postgraduate Researchers bring their projects to life for the ‘Visualise Your Thesis’ competition

Postgraduate Researchers have created vibrant and thought-provoking videos for this year's ‘Visualise Your Thesis’ (VYT) competition.

The annual competition, hosted by the Doctoral College and Centre for Research Capability and Development, invites postgraduate researchers (PGRs) from across Coventry University's research centres to produce a 1 minute audio-visual summary of their PhD research.

The aim of the video format is designed to give a non-expert audience a comprehensive insight into the research that is being undertaken, with participants being marked on the accessibility of their output and how engaging the content is.

Sara Lahlouhi, a PhD candidate in the Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities (CAMC) was announced as the 2021 winner. For her project, entitled 'An Investigation of UK Architecture Students' and Practitioners' Writing: A Corpus Linguistics Study', Sara's winning visualisation showcased her development of the first British Corpus of Architecture Writing (BCAW), a large collection of texts which will be analysed to better understand the linguistic features of architecture writing. She will now go on to represent Coventry University at the international competition held by the University of Melbourne.

Jhonny Ismael Bautista Quispe (Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience) was the runner up for his presentation exploring 'Portable hand-washing facility using bio-based materials for sustainable water treatment', with Emmanuel Luther (Centre for Fluid and Complex Systems) coming in third place.

This follows the first Coventry University Visualise Your Thesis competition which took place in 2020.

I had a very enjoyable time creating my 2021 Visualise Your Thesis entry. I have always had an interest in video-making and artistic design, and this gave me a chance to demonstrate it. There was a very high standard of entries this year - huge congratulations to all entries!

Sara Lahlouhi, VYT Winner 2021

Summarizing my research in 60 seconds was challenging but great to develop my creativity and visual communication skills. Through this competition, I have learnt several tools to easily transmit my research goals to wider audiences. I am confident this experience will help in my journey as a Doctoral candidate.

Jhonny Ismael Bautista Quispe, VYT Runner-up 2021

It was an awesome experience, thinking about how to narrate my research in a simple one-minute video to a non-specialist audience. The making of the video exposed me to many new ideas on things to consider when creating a media file for the public. Go for it if you can.

Emmanuel Luther, VYT Runner-up 2021

You can watch all the videos on the RECAP website.

The Visualise Your Thesis competition was developed by the University of Melbourne in 2015.