This year's Doctoral Welcome Reception took place on Tuesday 30 September 2025 at the Claverton Rooms. It was an engaging and vibrant occasion, bringing together Doctoral Researchers from various disciplines to network, meet key staff members, and learn more about the doctoral community at the University.
The event began with a panel of Senior Management where Professor Marcus Munafò, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost; Professor Sarah Hainsworth, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research and Enterprise); and Professor Joe Devine, Associate Pro-Vice Chancellor (Doctoral), formally welcomed new doctoral researchers to the University of Bath. The panel shared insights into the doctoral journey and highlighted the importance of doctoral researchers to the University’s academic community. It was emphasised that Doctoral Researchers should take full advantage of the opportunities available and to engage with the interdisciplinary research communities on campus.
Also present at the event was Lucy Wilkinson from the Department of Chemical Engineering, the winner of the University of Bath's Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition 2025. The 3MT is a national competition that challenges doctoral researchers to explain their PhD research in just three minutes, using only one slide. At the event, she gave a powerful performance of her winning presentation: ‘Can we eat meat and save the planet?’. Find out more about Three Minute Thesis (3MT).
From the Doctoral Discoveries initiative, there was a video of a talk by Emma Woodward, Centre for Doctoral Training in Cyber Security TIPS-at-scale, School of Management, where she shared how her research has made real Impact. From The Lighter Side of Research: PhD through humour, a video was shown of Caitlin Naylor who provided a funny account of her experiences as a doctoral researcher.
Several student-led doctoral groups, societies and University services were present at the Information Fair present on the day. These included student-led QUAL Research Community of Practice and the Bath Entrepreneurs Society and University services teams—such as Careers, MASH (Maths and Statistics Help service), the Library, and Student Support — hosted stalls to introduce themselves to the new cohort. These stalls provided an excellent opportunity for students to explore the wide range of support and resources available to them.
Our Doctoral Development Facilitators, a group of current doctoral students, were present to greet new students, answer any questions and run networking and engagement activities to help students get to know each other. The ‘hook a duck’ activity enabled to students to learn about each other and had prizes from chocolate to dishwasher tablets, whilst an activity on guessing the real or fake PhD titles, encouraged tables to work together as a team to come up with the answers.
Additionally, doctoral researchers participated in a quiz designed to test their knowledge of the various doctoral networks and groups present at the Information Fair. This year's announced winners were: Samuel Demeke Shiferaw, Hatta Kazu, Yasmin Sachdev, Li Linyi and Zhou Jennie who each received a £5 campus outlet lunch voucher as a prize!