We are delighted to announce an official partnership between My-Thesis and the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies (CAGS) — Association canadienne pour les études supérieures.
CAGS is Canada’s national organisation providing leadership, fostering community, and promoting collaboration to advance excellence in graduate education, research, and scholarship. Since its foundation in 1962, CAGS has become a leading voice for graduate education in Canada, bringing together universities and research institutions from across the country.
Its mission strongly complements that of My-Thesis. CAGS supports the development of individuals who, through scholarship, research and innovation, contribute to the flourishing of societies in Canada and internationally. Increasingly, that means not only producing excellent research, but also being able to explain why that research matters.
Research needs to be communicated
Graduate researchers develop extraordinary depth of expertise. Yet the ability to communicate that expertise clearly to people outside a highly specialised field is a different skill — and one that is increasingly important both within and beyond academia.
Researchers must be able to explain complex ideas to colleagues, funders, employers, policymakers, industry partners and the wider public. Spoken communication therefore deserves to be recognised as an important part of graduate education rather than simply an optional extra.
This is one of the reasons competitions such as the Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) have become so successful. Asking researchers to explain years of work in just three minutes requires clarity, confidence and a deep understanding of what is genuinely important about their research.
Many CAGS member institutions participate in 3MT and related research communication initiatives, producing thousands of compelling presentations by graduate researchers across an extraordinary range of disciplines.
Giving graduate research a longer life
One of the challenges with research presentation competitions is that excellent talks can quickly disappear from view after the event itself.
My-Thesis was created to change that.
By cataloguing research presentations and making them searchable by researcher, institution, discipline and topic, My-Thesis gives these presentations a life beyond the competition or event at which they were originally delivered.
A three-minute presentation can become more than a moment on a stage. It can become part of a researcher’s professional profile: something that can be discovered by potential collaborators, employers, students and other researchers.
For universities, this also creates an opportunity to showcase the breadth of graduate research taking place across their institution.
Showcasing Canadian graduate researchers
Through our partnership with CAGS, we look forward to showcasing presentations from graduate researchers across Canada and helping make their work more discoverable internationally.
CAGS represents around 69 universities and research institutions, creating an exceptional community of graduate education, scholarship and innovation.
Many of these institutions already place considerable emphasis on research communication. Our aim is to complement that work by providing a platform through which students can demonstrate those skills publicly and retain a lasting record of what they have achieved.
Over time, we hope that participation will extend well beyond competition finalists. Our broader ambition is that every graduate researcher should have the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to communicate their research clearly and engagingly.
From research output to researcher profile
Academic careers have traditionally been documented primarily through written outputs: publications, theses, conference abstracts and CVs. These remain essential, but they capture only part of what a researcher can do.
The ability to stand in front of an audience and explain a difficult idea clearly is also an important scholarly and professional skill.
My-Thesis profiles are designed to make that capability visible.
A searchable presentation allows someone encountering a researcher for the first time to hear them explain their own work, in their own words. In just a few minutes, it can communicate expertise, enthusiasm, clarity and confidence in ways that are difficult to capture on a conventional CV.
For students moving into careers outside academia, where the ability to communicate complex information to non-specialists is frequently essential, this may be particularly valuable.
A shared commitment to graduate education
The partnership between CAGS and My-Thesis reflects a shared belief that graduate education should prepare researchers not only to generate knowledge, but also to communicate it.
We are enormously pleased to be working with CAGS and its member institutions, and we look forward to highlighting the extraordinary diversity of graduate research taking place across Canada.
Most importantly, we hope the partnership will help create more opportunities for graduate researchers to be seen, be heard and be discovered.
To find out more about the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies, visit CAGS.ca.