NU student earns award at 3MT Ontario Finals
Last week, Lacey Bateman, a Master of History student, captured the Participant’s Choice Award in the Ontario finals for the Three Minute Thesis Competition (3MT).Bateman earned the trip to the Ontario Finals at Western University after winning the Nipissing competition during Research Week, in early March. Her presentation, titled Stories of Violence Against Indigenous Women in Canada: Understanding the Case of Helen Betty Osborne. Her presentation at Nipissing also earned her the coveted Peoples Choice Award. You can watch Bateman’s 3MT presentation in the video below.
Bateman garnered the $250 Participant’s Choice Award even though dangerous driving conditions prevented her from travelling to London, Ontario, for the competition.Here’s a brief summary of Bateman’s award-winning research:
This research examines the story of Helen Betty Osborne’s life, a Cree woman from Norway House, Manitoba, who had to leave her family, friends, and home to pursue her education in The Pas, Manitoba. While in The Pas, Osborne was brutally murdered by four white men. This project will examine Indigenous and Western sources from 1969-1991 to help tell Osborne’s story, exploring her murder, the sixteen years of silence in her case, and what her story tells historians about Indigenous women’s experiences in twentieth-century Canada.
3MT® is a university wide competition for Masters and Doctoral students in which participants present their research and its wider impact in 3 minutes or less to a panel of non-specialist judges.
3MT® competition was initially developed by The University of Queensland in 2008 to promote effective communication of research. The success of the first Queensland competition prompted other Australian and New Zealand universities to run their own competitions, culminating in the first Trans Tasman competition held in 2010. 3MT® has spread internationally.
The challenge is to present complex research material in an engaging, compelling way, using only one slide. The 3MT competition provides graduate students with an opportunity to refine skills that can be transferred after graduation to diverse career paths.
Distilling research into a clear form, without over-simplifying or making overly-complex, and highlighting the wider implications of this research are important skills to carry into post-graduate employment and public service.