Having been a part time PhD student for four years now,I have presented both locally and internationally to various conferences. I know there’s always a debate about how much we should be presenting during our thesis writing phase, and I think you need to weigh up your options carefully. My experience has been that a couple or a few presentations a year keep your public speaking skills in order and help stimulate feedback. However don’t bite off more than you can chew! A 20 minute presentation takes many days of development and you will hopefully seek feedback from others too which also takes time.
My best experience so far was being lucky enough to have an international conference be held at AUT last year. It was organized by Matt Mollgaard in Communications School and was a Radio conference. I presented on my thesis subject in relation to radio, and someone from Radio New Zealand was in the audience and invited me to present to her colleagues in Wellington. This gave me a chance to invite Wellington based people who had been helping me in the data collection phase (family, friends and colleagues of my thesis subject) to the presentation. I got great feedback and it was exciting to see the work I’d mostly undertaken in isolation shared with people who found it relevant and interesting (as everyone says, doing a PhD can be lonely!) Out of that presentation the idea bloomed for a radio programme on my thesis subject, which has also now been broadcast. I wrote an article on that broadcast which was published in a local film magazine. So as you can see one conference set off a wonderful chain reaction for me. However be aware how time consuming this is! Particularly if you have a very strict deadline (ie a 3 year scholarship) you may be best not to put your time into presentations. I think it’s always worth discussing with your supervisor though and other students further ahead in their study than you.
Author: Emma Kelly (PhD Student)
