 Next up, we have Kate Oaks from the Research School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics at the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences. And the title of her three-minute thesis tonight is, Meeting Our Paradoxes, Face On. Have you ever read a book that changed your life? Readers will tell you they have. Literature takes ideas and brings them to life in our minds and our hearts. That's what happened to me during my PhD. Let me take you on my research journey. Scholars have recently begun thinking more about animals, about our environmental and ethical impacts on other species. I love animals, and I'm fascinated by how we represent them in writing. This led me to an idea called the meat paradox. This is the fact that there are some animals we would never harm, but some animals it's normal to harm, though we are against animal cruelty but for animal slaughter. The meat paradox is something researchers are still trying to figure out, and it's important that we do because it impacts so much of how we treat animals. Considering the meat paradox helps us progress towards a more thoughtful world. Our new fiction was well-equipped to explore the paradox in a powerful way. So I looked to a famous author who is known for his depictions of animals. His name is Thomas Hardy. I analysed his biographies, letters, diaries, notebook entries, his published works and his manuscripts, and I found that Hardy was inconsolable after the death of his pet cat, but one of his favourite meals was bacon. I then conducted close readings of over a thousand pages from Hardy's most famous novels. Before my research, Hardy's animals were seen as cryptic and confusing. My analysis was able to show that Hardy's animals dramatised the meat paradox. In one scene, a milkmaid releases the swollen udders of a grateful cow and their bodies almost become one. In another, animal organs are thrown about in a game of catch. In one scene, a shepherd risks himself to save his flock. In another, the hero slits a pig's throat and watches it bleed to death. Reading these episodes, I would just sit and cry. I would think about the taste of bacon, but then that dying pig. Knowing about the meat paradox was one thing, but feeling it was another. To understand why Hardy's novels were so moving, I explored the tools they use, like metaphor, illusion and juxtaposition. We know from psychology why these tools work on readers. I was able to broaden our knowledge of Hardy's literary genius. My PhD opens up understandings of how we impact animals and how fiction impacts us. But I didn't just analyse novels, I also wrote my own. Like Hardy, I want to use fiction to pass on the ideas that have moved me. I started my research and meat eater. Now I don't think I'll ever eat an animal again. Fiction changed my life and it just might change yours too.