PhD students Larissa Barbosa Curi and Peadar Callaghan will represent TLU at Science in 3 Minutes competition

The selected international PhD students will have professional training in presentation skills, writing skills, stress management connected with presenting in front of the public and will write a popular science article on their research. A Final Gala with final presentations in the hall of Estonian Academy of Sciences will take place in October where the winners are selected by the jury. Tallinn University will be represented by Larissa Barbosa Curi from Baltic Film, Media and Arts School and Peadar Callaghan from School of Digital Technologies. 

Larissa Barbosa Curi

What is Your Science in 3 minutes proposal about? 
I’m investigating verbal account scenes in horror films, which is when a character tells another of a past event they witnessed or describe something they see (but the audience does not). Horror has been a topic of interest of mine for some time and this particular narrative strategy, at first glance, seems counterintuitive to our understanding of film as a primarily visual medium. But these scenes can be highly effective in their description. I am interested in how audiences feel when they watch a verbal account scene (mainly listening to a character tell a story) and compare it to the emotional effect of a more direct scene, where the horror is visually shown. I believe this will be of great value to filmmakers, expanding narrative strategies and allowing us to make more interesting genre films. 

What is Your own background and how did You come here to study at TLU?
I studied social communications in Brazil and came to Estonia for the first time in 2018 to complete a film master’s program. I spent a year studying at BFM and later on decided to stay for my doctoral studies, considering the new directions the school has been exploring with neurocinematics. 

What are You looking forward to in the competition?
Sharing my own research outside the university is great, but I am most looking forward to watching the other presentations and exchanging ideas. Popularizing research is important: I believe we should make sure our findings don’t circle only within academia and I look forward to finding out what is being studied in other fields. 

Peadar Callaghan

What is Your Science in 3 minutes proposal about? 
I study cybersecurity games and how they can be used to help people learn. Cybersecurity is a complex topic that many people feel is only the responsibility of technically minded people. However, it is a thing that everyone from childhood to CEO's need to be aware of. So how do we make it more engaging to learn.

What is Your own background and how did You come here to study at TLU?
I came to study digital learning game design at Tallinn University in 2019. Before that I was an English language teacher in both South Korea and Saudi Arabia. I wanted to make teaching and learning more engaging and interesting for everyone out there and came to realise that games were the pathway to do this.

What are You looking forward to in the competition? 
I always love the opportunity to discuss how game-based learning can be used to make the world a better place.