Popularization, gamification, gamification of work… There are many qualifiers to explain the competition, launched in 2014 in France, to all doctoral students and called “My thesis in 180 seconds”, or more quickly “MT180”. And under this barbaric name shelters the presentation in three minutes of years of research on subjects often obscure for the general public. Did you say paradoxical?
This is the opinion of Stéphane Le Lay, Jean Frances and Jean-Marc Corsi, three sociologists, authors of “My thesis in 180 seconds. When science becomes spectacle ”((Ed. Du Croquant) and interviewed in The world : “In the case of MT180, the promoters really want to highlight doctoral students and their work. Except that in fact, unwittingly, they create devices that have ambivalent effects ”.
Wanting to stage with force music, training and a competitive spirit, the “MT180” ignores several difficult aspects of the thesis process according to the three sociologists. And in particular, “trials, errors or collective work”, without forgetting “the precariousness of everyday life, with the misery of laboratories, the decrepitude of some of the departments …”
You are a researcher or doctoral student, how do you plan to tell your thesis in three minutes? Or a subject fascinates you, you could have “written a thesis”, how do you imagine your participation in such a competition?