Ancient History student Lawrence Xu has won the University’s Three-Minute Thesis competition.
The ultimate "elevator pitch", the Three Minute Thesis Competition is run in universities worldwide. Developed by The University of Queensland, the competition challenges higher research degree students to present a compelling oration on their thesis and its significance in just three minutes, using language appropriate to a non-specialist audience. Competitors are only allowed a single PowerPoint slide as a visual aid.
The annual University of Auckland competition is open to students from all faculties. Lawrence Xu’s presentation triumphed over other excellent pitches from students in Education, Science, Medical and Health Sciences, and Law. His speech succinctly summarised his thesis topic: “Heroes of Might and Magic - The Epic-ness of Demotic Stories.” Lawrence Xu, who is in his third year of doctoral study, says “the win was a total surprise for me, because I thought some of the other competitors were simply brilliant. In honesty, all I wanted to do was to share my enthusiasm for Ancient History and Egyptology with the audience.”
His supervisor, Professor Anthony Spalinger, is proud of Lawrence’s achievement, saying, "Lawrence is a proven leader and teacher as well as an excellent researcher. He possesses remarkable skills in academia, and has proven (indeed remarkable) charismatic skills. He is not just here at the University of Auckland to do his job as a PhD student; he is always trying to enhance language teaching by organising workshops and seminars, and his enthusiasm for the subject is paralleled by his great love of language and ancient history."
The win means that Lawrence will now go on to compete in the Trans-Tasman Final hosted by the University of Western Australia Perth on 3 November. He will also compete in the U21 3MT Virtual Competition in October.
