 to represent ANU at the Trans-Tasman Final and I'd like to ask Dr. Ken Henry and Elizabeth Hanton to give our $4,000 check to Rosanna Stevens. Hi, my name is Rosanna Stevens. I'm the winner of the ANU 3-minute thesis competition and runner-up and people's choice in the Trans-Tasman 3-minute thesis competition for 2014 and I'm a student here at ANU in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology and I'm within the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural research program here at ANU. I'm here to give you my three top tips for getting the most out of your 3-minute thesis experience. So my first tip, think about your slide. When I spoke I had a blank slide and it wasn't for no reason. When you get up there and you're speaking you want to make sure that that three minutes that you have are as exciting and informative as possible and one of the best ways that you can do that is by making sure that you really think about what's on the slide behind you. Don't just have a pretty picture because make sure that what you have behind you is helping explain what you're doing in a way that maybe your words can't. So for example with my blank slide I really wanted to communicate that the audience couldn't necessarily see something that I wanted them to and through that concept I was able to communicate a lot more about my research. Great things to include on a slide might be diagrams, you know funny pictures that do relate to what you're doing. An illustration of what you're talking about can really really help the audience go that extra step in understanding what you're talking about in a really useful way that helps convince them that what you're doing is really interesting. Tip two, change or save the world. That might sound like a really big thing to do but the three minute thesis is a really great time to check in with yourself about why you're doing your research and how it's important to you but also how it might be important to the broader community. Remember that you're doing the three minute thesis because you're communicating your research to a lay audience and a lay audience want to understand why you're passionate about what you're talking about. So sit down and think about how your research isn't necessarily changing everybody's lives but is changing the world in a way. So for example with my research I'm writing a novel sure that's my thesis but on top of that I'm actually wanting to interrogate the way that society functions to create a better sense of equality culturally and racially in Australia and when you talk about your research in those terms the audience can suddenly relate to what you're talking about in a new way that helps them shed light on why what you're doing is so weighted and vital and why you're passionate about it in the first place. Tip three in the words of a famous Disney princess let it go. Letting it go might sound like a really difficult thing to do but when you get up on that stage and you've done all of that preparation leading up to you speaking you want to be able to get up there and make sure that there isn't an extra dialogue going on in your head and it's really hard to stop that voice. People do the three minute thesis for all kinds of reasons they do it because they're competitive they do it because they like speaking they do it because they want to challenge themselves to become better at communicating their research or in the case of me I really wanted to make sure that my research was answerable to a broader audience and that they felt like they could talk about it to me. So when you get up there no matter which reason you're engaging with to get up on that stage you need to make sure that in that moment you rely on all of the practice that you've done and you just let it go. Enjoy the experience and that's really hard to do but a great way of practicing that is to use a space, imagine that you are getting up in front of an audience, imagine that there are lights on you, close your eyes for a minute and then pretend that you really are starting it for the first time and there is no going back. You'll find that you will actually make a lot of mistakes that you didn't think that you were going to make in the first place but also this surprising experience is going to mean that when it comes to getting up on that stage you really can just let it go. So much more than just white.