We are delighted to announce a new partnership between My-Thesis and the Irish Universities Association (IUA), the representative voice of Ireland’s research-intensive public universities.

The IUA represents seven universities — Dublin City University, Maynooth University, Trinity College Dublin, University College Cork, University College Dublin, University of Galway and University of Limerick — and works collectively across higher education policy, research, researcher development, engagement and internationalisation.

Together, these universities educate more than 155,000 students, including almost 10,000 PhD candidates, and account for a substantial proportion of Ireland’s university research activity. In 2024, research investment across IUA universities totalled €670 million.

For My-Thesis, this partnership represents an important opportunity to help make the people behind that research more visible.

Great research deserves to be heard

Universities are exceptionally good at recording written academic achievement. Publications, theses, conference papers and qualifications provide a detailed account of what a researcher has produced.

But they reveal much less about whether somebody can explain their research clearly to another person.

That distinction matters.

Graduate researchers increasingly need to communicate beyond their immediate specialism: to colleagues in other disciplines, industry partners, employers, policymakers, funders and members of the public. The ability to take a complex problem and make it understandable without sacrificing its substance is therefore an important part of becoming an effective researcher.

My-Thesis was created to give that skill greater visibility.

Making spoken communication discoverable

Across Ireland, graduate researchers already give excellent presentations through doctoral showcases, conferences, public-engagement events and competitions such as the Three Minute Thesis.

Too often, however, these presentations are transient. A researcher may spend weeks preparing an outstanding explanation of their work, deliver it once, and then see the recording disappear into a university website, video channel or archive where it becomes difficult to find.

My-Thesis provides a different model.

We catalogue graduate research presentations and make them searchable by researcher, institution, subject and topic. This means that an individual presentation can continue to work for the researcher long after the original event has finished.

It becomes part of a visible research profile rather than simply a recording of a past occasion.

Connecting research with opportunity

This matters not only for academic visibility but also for researcher development.

The IUA describes its universities as institutions that nurture talent and create, disseminate and apply knowledge while building partnerships across society and internationally. My-Thesis complements that ambition by providing another route through which the expertise of graduate researchers can be discovered.

A prospective collaborator might find someone working on a related research problem. An employer might encounter a doctoral researcher with precisely the specialist knowledge they need. A journalist or policymaker might discover someone capable of explaining an emerging field. Another student might simply find an inspiring example of what research in that discipline looks like.

In each case, the presentation provides something that a conventional academic profile cannot: the opportunity to hear the researcher explain their own work in their own voice.

Communication as part of researcher development

The partnership also reflects a wider change in how we think about doctoral education.

A PhD develops deep subject expertise, but relatively few doctoral graduates will spend their entire careers communicating solely with specialists in their own discipline. Researchers increasingly operate across disciplinary, professional and organisational boundaries.

Being able to communicate clearly is therefore not separate from research excellence. It is one of the ways research achieves impact.

This is particularly relevant as universities place greater emphasis on transferable skills, researcher careers, public engagement and collaboration beyond academia.

My-Thesis provides a simple way of making one of those capabilities visible and verifiable.

Showcasing Irish graduate research

Our partnership with the Irish Universities Association will help us highlight the extraordinary breadth of research being undertaken by graduate researchers across Ireland.

The IUA already brings together senior leaders in graduate studies and research from across its member universities, creating a strong national network for sharing practice and developing graduate education.

We hope My-Thesis can add another dimension to that work: a shared public space where graduate researchers can showcase not only what they are studying, but also how well they can communicate it.

Over time, our ambition is straightforward.

Every graduate researcher should have the opportunity to produce a concise, accessible explanation of their work — and to have that communication recognised as part of their professional identity.

The partnership with the Irish Universities Association brings us another important step closer to that goal.

We look forward to working with the IUA and its member universities to make Ireland’s graduate research — and the remarkable people carrying it out — more visible to the world.

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.

Employers have long said that communication matters. New evidence suggests something slightly more important: they increasingly want graduates to prove that they can communicate, rather than simply claim that they can.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) Job Outlook 2026 Spring Update reports that, when recruiting graduates for entry-level positions, employers are particularly looking for evidence of three core capabilities: teamwork, problem-solving and communication. More than half of the employers surveyed identified ten or more different skills they wanted to see in candidates.

This reflects a broader change in graduate recruitment. According to NACE, 70% of employers now report using skills-based hiring, up from 65% the previous year, and 71% of those employers use it at least half of the time.

The degree still matters. But increasingly, employers want to know what a graduate can actually do.

The important word is “evidence”

This creates an interesting problem for universities and students.

A CV can say:

Excellent communication skills.

But what does that actually demonstrate?

Almost every graduate can make the same claim. Employers therefore increasingly look for examples: situations in which candidates have communicated complex ideas, worked with others, solved problems or explained something clearly to a particular audience.

NACE's advice is essentially show, don't just tell. Students need to identify experiences in which they have developed these skills and be able to articulate them during applications and interviews.

Communication is particularly interesting because, unlike many graduate attributes, it can actually be demonstrated.

A student does not have to tell an employer that they are a good communicator.

They can show them.

A short research talk is evidence

This is one reason initiatives such as the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) are potentially much more significant than simply being academic competitions.

A researcher taking part in a 3MT has to explain a complex piece of research to a non-specialist audience in just three minutes.

Doing that successfully requires several transferable skills simultaneously.

The speaker has to identify what is important, discard unnecessary technical detail, structure an argument, communicate clearly, engage an audience and work within a strict constraint.

Those are not abstract claims about employability. They are observable behaviours.

And they are remarkably close to the capabilities employers say they want.

The distinction matters because employers themselves see room for improvement. NACE's 2026 research found that employers rank communication among the most important career-readiness skills for new graduates, but are less impressed with graduates' communication abilities than with their teamwork skills.

For postgraduate researchers, the issue may be particularly acute. A PhD provides compelling evidence of technical expertise, persistence and intellectual ability, but those qualities may not be immediately apparent to someone recruiting outside the candidate's specialist discipline.

Being able to explain that research clearly changes the equation.

From CV to evidence portfolio

Graduate recruitment may therefore be moving towards something closer to a portfolio model of employability.

Instead of merely listing attributes—

• Communication
• Critical thinking
• Leadership
• Problem-solving

—graduates will increasingly benefit from being able to attach evidence to them.

For software developers, that might be a GitHub repository.

For designers, it is already standard practice to provide a portfolio.

For researchers, one of the simplest forms of evidence could be a short video demonstrating their ability to communicate their work.

This is where platforms such as my-thesis.org can potentially play a useful role.

my-thesis indexes short research presentations and connects them to searchable researcher profiles. Rather than allowing a three-minute presentation to disappear after a university competition or graduation ceremony, it can become part of a researcher's persistent professional identity.

A graduate applying for a role can therefore point to something concrete:

Here is my research. Here is how I explain it. Here is evidence that I can communicate complex ideas clearly.

That is considerably more informative than writing excellent verbal communication skills on a CV.

Communication matters beyond academia

The relevance also extends well beyond students intending to remain in universities.

NACE's findings concern entry-level employment generally, and the continued growth of skills-based recruitment means that employers are deliberately looking beyond degree subject and academic performance when assessing candidates.

This is potentially good news for postgraduate researchers.

A doctoral student investigating gravitational waves, cancer biology, medieval history or machine learning may apply for a career in which the precise subject of their thesis is not directly relevant.

What remains highly transferable is their ability to understand difficult material, identify the important information and explain it to somebody who is not an expert.

A short research presentation makes that ability visible.

Universities can help students create the evidence

There is an implication here for graduate schools and careers services as well.

If employers are moving towards evidence-based assessment of skills, universities should not only teach those skills. They should help students produce portable evidence that they possess them.

A presentation should therefore not necessarily be regarded as a transient classroom exercise or a competition entry that disappears once it has been assessed.

It can be a professional asset.

Universities already encourage students to build CVs, LinkedIn profiles and records of extracurricular activities. Short research communication should increasingly be considered part of that same employability infrastructure.

The question for graduates may soon be changing from:

“Do you have good communication skills?”

to:

“Can you show me?”

For thousands of postgraduate researchers who have already stood up and explained years of work in three minutes, the answer could be sitting in a video that already exists.

The challenge is making sure employers can find it.

One of the reasons for this platform is to not only provide an authentic voice on new cutting-edge research, but also showcase presentation skills which will become a premium in the changing graduate world. But orally presenting your research to an audience is also a valuable learning experience. A new case study from Swansea University suggests that 3MT is more than a public speaking exercise. It can produce measurable changes in how postgraduate researchers understand, present and value their own work.

Writing for the Researcher Education and Development Scholarship Conference, (which is edited by Dr Kay Guccione)  Dr Teresa Phipps and Dr Emily Lowthian describe their findings from Swansea University’s 2024 3MT programme. Their central question was simple but important: does taking part in 3MT actually improve doctoral researchers’ confidence and communication skills, or does it merely appear to do so?

To answer this, they followed 19 doctoral researchers through the competition process, collecting survey data at three stages: the initial information and training session, after the qualifying round, and after the university-wide final. Their approach combined quantitative survey questions with open-ended reflections, allowing them to measure change while also capturing the more personal experience of standing up and speaking about a complex thesis in public.

The findings are striking. By the end of the 3MT process, 80% of participants described themselves as confident presenting their research. There was also a 60 percentage-point increase in participants’ intention to seek out further opportunities to present their work. Students reported improvements in their ability to adapt their communication for different audiences, identify what an audience needs, explain the significance of their research, and communicate the broader value of their thesis.

This matters because 3MT does not simply ask doctoral researchers to speak more quickly. It asks them to think differently. A thesis is usually written for specialists, examined by experts, and developed within a highly technical scholarly context. 3MT requires the researcher to step outside that frame and ask: What is the core idea? Why does it matter? Who needs to understand it? What would make someone outside my field care?

That process appears to help researchers see the “big picture” of their own work. Several participants reflected that the competition helped them summarise their thesis, relate it to different audiences, and step outside their comfort zone. For some, especially those for whom English was a second language or who had limited previous presenting experience, the process was challenging but valuable.

One of the most interesting findings is that increased confidence did not mean the disappearance of nerves. Participants still described anxiety, concern about getting the presentation right, and uncertainty about whether they had pitched their talk at the correct level. But this is precisely what makes the study useful. Confidence in communication is not the same as effortless performance. It is often built through the experience of doing something difficult, receiving feedback, and discovering that anxiety and achievement can coexist.

The study also found a more modest increase in enjoyment of presenting research. This may reflect the fact that those who choose to enter 3MT may already be relatively open to research dissemination. But it also points to a more realistic understanding of researcher development. Not everyone needs to become a natural performer. The aim is not to turn every doctoral researcher into a polished public speaker, but to help them become clearer, more adaptable and more confident communicators.

For universities, the Swansea case study offers an important lesson. 3MT works best when treated not simply as a competition, but as a structured development programme. At Swansea, participants received training, analysed previous presentations, took part in qualifying rounds, and received one-to-one feedback. Following the study, the university has further strengthened support around script development, audience awareness and public speaking coaching.

This is where graduate presenations have wider significance for postgraduate education. Doctoral researchers are increasingly expected to explain their work beyond the academy: to funders, employers, policymakers, industry partners, schools, charities, media organisations and the wider public. Yet conventional doctoral training still places most emphasis on written outputs: the thesis, journal articles, grant applications and conference abstracts. These remain essential, but they do not cover the full range of communication skills researchers need.

A three-minute talk is not a simplified thesis. Done well, it is a disciplined act of translation. It demands clarity without distortion, accessibility without trivialisation, and confidence without jargon. The Swansea study provides useful evidence that this kind of training can change not only how doctoral researchers present, but how they think about the value and audience for their work.

For my-thesis.org, these findings reinforce why short research talks deserve to be preserved, indexed and made discoverable. A 3MT presentation is often the most accessible public expression of a doctoral project. It captures the researcher’s voice, the central question, the significance of the work and the human story behind the research. Yet too many of these talks disappear into institutional webpages, YouTube channels or one-off competition archives where they are difficult to find after the event.

If 3MT helps researchers become more confident communicators, then platforms like my-thesis.org can help ensure that their communication has a life beyond the competition. Making talks searchable by topic, institution, speaker and keyword means that the value created through 3MT training is not lost. It allows future students, supervisors, employers, collaborators and members of the public to discover research through the people who are doing it.

The Swansea study shows that 3MT can have a tangible impact on postgraduate confidence, self-efficacy and communication behaviour. But it also shows something deeper: doctoral researchers benefit when they are asked to explain why their work matters, not only to examiners, but to the wider world.

Three minutes may be brief. The impact can last much longer.

Artificial intelligence is changing higher education at a remarkable pace.

In a recent opinion piece for Times Higher Education, Bruce Hood argued that as AI becomes increasingly capable of producing polished written work, universities must rethink how they develop and assess one of the most important graduate attributes: the ability to communicate knowledge effectively to other human beings.

For decades, universities have focused primarily on written communication. Essays, reports, dissertations and examinations have been the traditional ways students demonstrate understanding. But the emergence of generative AI raises an uncomfortable question: if a machine can help produce convincing written work, how can employers, educators and society distinguish between possessing knowledge and simply presenting it?

The answer may lie in a skill that has often been overlooked within higher education: spoken communication.

Communication Beyond Writing

The ability to explain complex ideas clearly has always mattered. Whether presenting research, pitching a business proposal, explaining technical concepts to clients, or leading a team, professional success often depends on communicating knowledge effectively.

Employers recognise this. Across multiple surveys, verbal communication consistently ranks among the most sought-after graduate attributes. Yet many students complete their degrees having received relatively little formal training in public speaking, audience engagement or persuasive communication.

This is particularly surprising given that communication is not simply the transmission of information. Effective speakers must think on their feet, respond to questions, establish credibility, build trust and adapt to their audience in real time. These are deeply human skills that AI cannot easily replicate.

Knowledge Is Not Enough

Good communication begins with understanding.

One concern is that AI may allow students to engage less deeply with the material they are studying. If students rely on AI to generate essays and reports, they may miss the intellectual struggle that often produces genuine comprehension.

But even deep knowledge is not sufficient on its own.

Many graduates possess considerable expertise but struggle to explain it to non-specialists. Anyone who has attended an academic conference knows that expertise and communication ability do not always go hand in hand.

Communication is a skill that requires practice, feedback and repetition. Like any complex ability, it improves through deliberate effort.

Why Three Minute Thesis Matters

This is one reason the Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition has become such a global success.

Developed by the University of Queensland and now adopted by more than a thousand institutions worldwide, 3MT challenges doctoral researchers to explain years of work in just three minutes using language that a general audience can understand.

The challenge is deceptively difficult.

Researchers must identify the core message of their work, strip away unnecessary jargon, construct a compelling narrative and connect with an audience that may know nothing about their field.

In doing so, they develop precisely the communication skills that employers, policymakers, journalists and the public increasingly value.

The Problem of Visibility

Yet there is another challenge.

Every year, thousands of students participate in competitions, public engagement events, conference presentations and research showcases. These experiences develop valuable communication skills, but the evidence often disappears once the event concludes.

A presentation may be uploaded to YouTube, buried within a university playlist, and never seen again.

The achievement itself becomes difficult to discover, verify or showcase.

Why My-Thesis?

My-Thesis was created to address this problem.

The platform provides a searchable index of research presentations, enabling graduate researchers to make their talks more discoverable and giving audiences a way to find research by topic, institution, researcher or keyword.

But the platform is about more than research visibility.

At its core, My-Thesis recognises communication as an academic achievement in its own right.

A successful presentation demonstrates not only what a researcher knows but also their ability to explain, persuade and engage. These are increasingly important skills in a world where information is abundant but understanding remains scarce.

Looking Forward

Artificial intelligence is undoubtedly transforming education. Universities will continue to debate how best to assess knowledge and maintain academic integrity in an age of AI-assisted learning.

However, one consequence seems increasingly clear.

The graduates who thrive will not simply be those who possess knowledge. They will be those who can communicate it effectively, authentically and persuasively.

The ability to stand in front of an audience and explain an idea clearly may become one of the most valuable skills a graduate can possess.

And that is precisely why platforms such as My-Thesis matter more than ever.

This week, the University of Manchester announced plans to guarantee every undergraduate some form of real-world work experience before graduation, signalling something much bigger than a curriculum redesign. It may represent a fundamental shift in what universities believe a degree is actually for.

For generations, elite universities—particularly those within the Russell Group—have defended higher education as intellectual formation rather than vocational training. A degree was meant to cultivate critical thinking, analysis, communication, and intellectual independence.

But the economic reality facing graduates has changed dramatically.

Students now leave university with debts often exceeding £50,000, entering one of the most competitive graduate labour markets in decades. Many graduates struggle to secure professional employment and increasingly find themselves underemployed in roles that historically did not require degrees. Employers, meanwhile, continue to complain about “skills gaps” and lack of workplace readiness.

Against this backdrop, Manchester’s proposal feels less radical and more inevitable.

A Degree Plus Experience

Vice-chancellor Duncan Ivison argued that no student should spend three years engaged solely in academic study. Instead, every student should have the opportunity to contextualise their learning through placements, internships, employer projects, exchanges, or community engagement.

Importantly, this model applies equally to humanities and STEM subjects.

That matters because employers consistently report valuing transferable skills such as communication, creativity, collaboration, adaptability, and critical reasoning—precisely the capabilities many degrees already develop. The problem is often not the absence of these skills, but graduates struggling to demonstrate them convincingly.

Experience provides evidence.

A history student who has completed a museum placement or policy project suddenly has a narrative connecting academic abilities to practical application. Structured work experience becomes the bridge between intellectual capability and employability.

The Hidden Inequality Problem

Manchester’s proposal also addresses a quieter issue within graduate recruitment: access.

Prestigious internships and professional opportunities are often easier to secure for students with family networks, financial support, or existing social capital. Universities embedding work experience directly into degree structures may therefore help level the playing field.

Manchester explicitly stated that opportunities should not depend on “personal contacts” — a significant acknowledgement of how unequal graduate access can be.

However, scale remains a challenge. As Nick Hillman noted, coordinating meaningful placements for more than 30,000 undergraduates is a major logistical undertaking. Many students are already balancing paid work alongside study because of rising living costs. Adding additional placements without careful integration risks increasing pressure rather than reducing it.

The AI Era and the Value of Human Skills

Manchester’s move also reflects a wider transformation accelerated by artificial intelligence.

As AI automates more routine cognitive tasks — drafting, summarising, coding assistance, data analysis — the labour market increasingly rewards distinctly human capabilities: judgement, communication, creativity, collaboration, and adaptability.

Experiential learning develops precisely these attributes.

Placements force students to navigate ambiguity, institutional cultures, deadlines, teamwork, and practical problem-solving in ways difficult to replicate entirely within lectures or seminars.

This is where platforms such as my-thesis.org become particularly relevant.

One of the growing challenges for graduates is not simply possessing skills, but making those skills visible. Traditional CVs often struggle to communicate qualities such as communication ability, intellectual confidence, public engagement, or interdisciplinary thinking.

Short-format academic presentations — such as Three Minute Thesis competitions — provide direct evidence of those capabilities. They showcase not only subject expertise, but the ability to explain complex ideas clearly, think under pressure, communicate persuasively, and engage wider audiences.

By indexing and making these presentations searchable, my-thesis.org effectively creates a public-facing portfolio of graduate communication and research skills. In an increasingly competitive labour market, this gives students something far more dynamic than a transcript alone: demonstrable evidence of intellectual and professional capability.

In many ways, platforms like my-thesis.org complement the same shift Manchester is recognising — the move away from degrees as static credentials and toward graduates as visible, verifiable demonstrations of applied skill.

Beyond Employability

Reducing universities purely to workforce preparation would still be a mistake. Universities are civic and intellectual institutions, not simply employment factories.

But Manchester’s proposal is significant because it attempts to fuse intellectual development with real-world application rather than treating them as opposites.

The old divide between “academic” and “vocational” education is beginning to collapse. The future university may increasingly be defined not only by lectures and examinations, but by ecosystems connecting scholarship, communication, public engagement, workplace experience, and applied learning.

The question students increasingly ask is no longer simply: “What did I learn?”

It is: “How can I show what I’m capable of doing?”

Academic inboxes are crowded. Between calls for papers, administrative messages, newsletters, and teaching communications, even genuinely important emails are easy to overlook. For researchers trying to share their work—whether with supervisors, collaborators, institutions, or external partners—standing out is increasingly difficult.

One simple strategy consistently cuts through the noise: video.

Short, well-crafted video messages can dramatically increase engagement, clarity, and response rates. For platforms like my-thesis.org, which focus on authentic spoken research communication, video emails are not marketing gimmicks—they are an extension of how scholars already explain, defend, and share ideas.

Below we outline why video works in academic contexts and how researchers can use video email effectively, without turning scholarship into sales.

1. Video increases engagement and response: Market research consistently shows that emails containing video outperform text-only messages in both open and click-through rates. This matters for researchers when:

• Requesting feedback on work
• Introducing themselves to potential collaborators
• Sharing research outputs beyond journals
• Contacting institutions, funders, or industry partners

Video reduces the cognitive effort required to understand complex ideas and increases the likelihood that recipients will actually engage.

2. Video makes research more memorable: We are far more likely to remember visual explanations than dense text. Spoken explanations allow researchers to:

• Emphasise the why behind their work
• Use analogy and narrative
• Signal confidence and credibility

This is precisely why formats such as the 3-Minute Thesis work so well—and why short video emails can act as a gateway to deeper engagement with research.

3. Video humanises expertise: Academic emails often sound interchangeable. Video reintroduces:

• Voice
• Expression
• Presence

This is particularly valuable for early-career researchers, where trust and visibility matter. A short video allows recipients to see who is behind the research, not just the project title or affiliation.

4. Video can save time—for everyone: Long explanatory emails are inefficient. A 30–60 second video can replace several paragraphs of clarification, reduce back-and-forth, and prevent misunderstandings—especially when explaining:

• Methods
• Concepts outside one’s discipline
• The motivation behind a project

Where video emails work especially well in academia

Researchers commonly use video emails to:

• Introduce themselves to potential supervisors or collaborators
• Share a recorded 3-Minute Thesis or public talk
• Explain a grant idea or project overview
• Support teaching and supervision communication
• Promote public engagement or impact activities

Platforms like my-thesis.org extend this further by linking short talks to verified researchers and institutions, allowing video communication to remain credible, contextualised, and discoverable.

Final thought

Email is not disappearing—academic inboxes will only get busier. As research becomes more interdisciplinary and public-facing, spoken explanation is becoming a core scholarly skill, not an optional extra.

Short video emails are not about self-promotion. They are about clarity, accessibility, and human connection—all of which sit at the heart of good research communication.

For researchers who already know how to explain their work aloud, video is simply the most direct way to let others hear it.

If you’ve been watching the rapid rise of AI and wondering whether human skills still matter, the data brings a refreshing reality check: communication remains the single most in-demand skill in the workforce.

A recent analysis of nearly 2 million job postings by Aura Intelligence, a workforce analytics platform, found that communication topped the list across every major industry. And this isn’t just a hiring preference — it’s an economic necessity. According to Axios HQ, ineffective communication costs U.S. businesses $2 trillion every year.

So even as AI reshapes our workflows, automates tasks, and transforms entire professions, strong communication has never been more essential. On my-thesis.org, where we celebrate real researchers and real expertise, this insight matters: the future belongs to those who can explain ideas clearly, persuade effectively, and connect authentically.

AI Is Growing — and Making Human Skills More Valuable

AI is accelerating fast. Tools that once felt futuristic — from large language models to automated data visualization — are becoming part of daily work across sectors. But this technological leap has created an interesting paradox:

The more powerful AI becomes, the more valuable human communication skills are.

A Wiley Workplace Intelligence survey of more than 2,000 professionals revealed that 80% believe soft skills are more important than ever because of AI’s evolution. And importantly, the report highlights what AI still can’t do:

“A bot doesn’t know that your colleague has been caring for an ailing family member… or that your boss is doing the job of three people.”

AI can process data, summarize information, even generate content — but it cannot read a room, understand context, or offer empathy. These gaps make human communication irreplaceable.

Why Communication Matters Even More in 2025 and Beyond

Here’s what today’s research and market data are telling us:

Communication builds trust

Teams function on relationships, not algorithms. Humans need clarity, empathy, and nuance — especially when decisions carry emotional or ethical weight.

Communication drives leadership

As AI handles technical complexity, meetings, negotiations, and decision-making rely even more on leaders who can communicate clearly and responsibly.

Communication unlocks the value of technical skills

You can master AI or cloud systems — but those skills only matter when you can explain insights, persuade stakeholders, and collaborate effectively.

Communication protects the bottom line

With trillions lost to miscommunication, organizations are prioritizing people who can translate ideas into action and avoid costly misunderstandings.

What This Means for Students, Researchers, and Professionals

The future job market will reward:

• Clear speakers
• Thoughtful listeners
• Effective writers
• Insightful presenters
• Empathetic collaborators

In other words: the core skills behind every 3 Minute Thesis presentation and every research story shared on my-thesis.org.

As AI grows more capable, your ability to communicate what you know — not just what you can produce — becomes your competitive edge.