Seamus is a skilled and engaging public speaker with a relaxed, comedic tone and a flexible mindset.

What even is a PhD?

Target Audience - PhD Candidates
While slightly drunk on his honeymoon in Vietnam, Seamus wandered into the Văn Miếu, Vietnam's first national university from the early 11th century. Now a national monument, he came across a series of stone turtles carrying engraved tablets on their back. Each tablet contained the names of those who had passed the doctoral exam between 1442 and 1779.

Bemused, confused, and jealous of the fact that he never got his name on a turtle, this kicked off a year-long research initiative by Seamus into what actually is a PhD.

In this talk, we explore the results of this work -

What even is a PhD.
Who was the first Dr.
What do you actually need to do to get a PhD.
Why does it matter.

Quantitative research for people who hate Quantitative research

Target Audience - Undergraduate, Master’s, and PhD Candidates involved in research. Good for social science and Arts students who may not have been exposed to Statistics beyond a single module.

Quantitative research can be intimidating to the point that many seasoned professors go to elaborate lengths to avoid being involved in it. It is a dense, complicated, and (worst of all) something you can do wrong. There is nothing Academics hate more than being wrong.

In this talk, we take a very practical approch to demystifying Quantitative research including -

What sort of research questions even merit a quantitive approach
Where to start
How select the right test
How to not screw it up

The eternal question: Academia or Industry?

Target Audience - PhD Candidates and Postdoctoral researchers.

In Dunegeons and Dragons characters specalise into subclasses. The same is true of academics. Do you specilise

In this talk we look at the options and careers paths in front of early career reserachers. We honestly and directly discuss that there is significantly more PhD researchers than academic roles. We explore what skills a person with a PhD can bring to the industy roles