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.
