This year, SGroup has launched its first PhD Training and Competition, which comprises several phases. In the training session "Crafting Your Professional Pitch", held in early September, 26 PhD candidates from 18 SGroup universities received group and personal coaching on rhetorical skills (see more here).

Afterwards, participants submitted their 3-minute thesis pitch presentations, which were individually and carefully assessed by the jury according to the published criteria.

The jury congratulates the participants on the way they effectively communicated their research projects to a non-expert audience and is proud to announce the top ten candidates:

·      Mitchka Shahryari, PhD candidate in Archeology History Languages of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, University of Lille - Laboratoire HALMA and École Pratique des Hautes Etudes, France

·      Radu-Dan Irini, PhD candidate in Management, Babes-Bolyai University - Doctoral School of Economics and Business Administration, Romania

·      Nitesh Godara, PhD candidate under 'World of Wild Waters' project at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

·      Deanna Tepper, PhD candidate in Philosophy, La Trobe University - Department of Psychology, Counselling and Therapy/School of Psychology and Public Health, Australia

·      Diana Kisakye, PhD candidate in African Politics and Development Policy, University of Bayreuth – African Politics and Development Policy, Germany

·   Ius Nathalie Chingaté Hernández, PhD candidate in Political Science, University of Los Andes – Faculty of Social Sciences, Colombia

·      Puti Sinansari, PhD candidate in the University of Szczecin – Department of Management and Quality, Poland

·      Luca Versteegen, PhD candidate in Political Science, University of Gothenburg - Department of Political Science, Sweden

 ·     João Pinto, PhD candidate in Political Science and International Relation, University of Minho - Department of Political Science, Portugal

 ·       Ouiam Fatiha Boukharta, PhD candidate in Food and Biosystems Science and Engineering, University of Valladolid – Department of Agricultural and Forestry Engineering, Spain

All submitted pitches can be seen here.

Over the next weeks, we will share profiles of these candidates and their research work to give visibility to the excellence in PhD Education in the SGroup network.

The top five qualifiers will do a final live delivery of their pitch to the jury and the SGroup community and receive their award - an SGroup PhD Mobility Grant of up to 1000€ to carry out research in any institution of their choice -  at the Final Ceremony of the initiative. The event will be part of the Think Tank Academy Conference at the SGroup Annual Meetings, on 26 October, in the University of Minho, in Guimarães, Portugal.