“The thesis is the apex achievement of the master’s student,” said GSAS Dean Carlos Alonso in his opening remarks for the 2025 SynThesis public speaking competition. “These twelve brave souls have taken on the extra challenge of distilling that research to its bare essence in a three-minute presentation, using only one slide.” And so the event began. Host Francesca Fanelli, the interim Director of GSAS Compass, the graduate career development office, introduced each presenter. One by one, the graduate students took center stage, facing not only a live audience, but a merciless clock. In under an hour, the crowd learned about such topics as ancient Egyptian papyri, Germany’s medical reforms in the 1990s, and the history of women as mediators and peacekeepers.
While the judges tallied their scores, and audience members voted for their favorites, the students compared notes about their SynThesis experiences. For Emmanuela Douyon, the event was an opportunity to challenge herself by presenting in English, her third language. Douyon was relieved that her talk about “Fleeing a Nation on the Brink: Haitian Migration in the First Quarter of the 21st Century” went well. “In a lot of ways,” she said, “this is practice for how I’ll talk about my research to others after my program. But the best part was having my best friend here, who has heard me talk about my thesis over the years.” Alena Struzh relied on her self-proclaimed "theater-kid past" to maintain her poise when explaining “Exile and Engagement: The Role of Host States in Russian Migrants’ Political Behavior.” Siyu Hua who presented “‘Tears in Rain’: Liminal Spaces during Human-Robot Interactions in Science Fiction Films from the 1960s to 2000s,” said to prepare she took videos of herself “to see my gestures and my posture, to see if my mom would understand what I’m talking about.” Haakon Huynh rehearsed his talk “Why Vietnamese Diasporas Protest—But Often Don’t Vote” over and over. “First, to myself, then to my girlfriend. She helped me by simulating different distractions so that I could train myself to keep calm under any circumstance.” Kirill Shabalin felt happy and proud to represent the South Asian Studies department with his presentation, which asked, “What Did India’s Political Parties Say About Citizenship in 2019?” Shabalin found SynThesis to be “good practice, because now I have to defend my thesis. Out loud.”
After the break, Fanelli announced the results, beginning with the Audience Choice winners. The award for the Most Innovative Presentation went to Hua for her talk about ethics and robots. Dani Pergola won the Best Communicator award for her presentation, “Hidden Giants: Estimating Hellbender Populations with Artificial Nest Boxes.” Said Pergola, “The hardest part was putting it in really clear terms for a generalist audience. It’s easy to have a lot of scientific jargon.” Kimberley Snijders won the award for Best Slide, with her colorful illustration of a marketplace for her presentation, “Entrepreneurship as Freedom? Interrogating the Role of Entrepreneurship as a Tool to Advance Gender Equality in International Development.”
Next, Fanelli announced the judges’ choices. Third place went to Peter Silverstein, who spoke about “Evaluating RapidRide Bus Reliability in Seattle, WA, Using Bayesian Additive Regression Trees.” How did he choose this topic? “I really like mass transit. I sold my car because I was fed up with it.” Silverstein said he hoped to celebrate by doing well on his final exam scheduled for 7:00 am the next day. In second place was Teresa Mondría Terol, with “You Only Get One Chance to Make a Good Impression: The Key to Reader Retention in Local Journalism.” Terol was especially proud after a stressful week. “I was in Spain two days ago and there was a full-country blackout. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to come.”
Snijders, who had just won the award for Best Slide, was also the overall first-place winner. “I'm so honored!” she exclaimed. “It feels amazing because I really believe in the mission of SynThesis in a time where truth is being questioned and information is easily accessible, but reliable information is hard to find.” She plans to use her $1000 prize to launch her own PR agency for social enterprises and NGOs. “I want to help other people spread their stories and narratives to reach bigger audiences. If you're able to communicate something that speaks to people's imagination, you can really mobilize them to maybe do something differently in their daily life.”
Judges
Brian Boyd
Senior Lecturer and Director of Museum Anthropology, Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies, and Co-Chair of the University Seminar on Human-Animal Studies
Line Lillevik
Program Director for the master’s degree in International and World History and Adjunct Assistant Professor of History
Romy Silver-Kohn (’08MA, Modern and Contemporary Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies)
Co-Editor of Inventing the Modern: Untold Stories of the Women Who Shaped The Museum of Modern Art
Julia Kang-Reeves (’94MA, Classics)
Chief Marketing Officer at Earth Therapeutics
Presenters
Haakon Huynh (Global Thought)
Why Vietnamese Diasporas Protest—But Often Don’t Vote
Dani Pergola (Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology)
Hidden Giants: Estimating Hellbender Populations with Artificial Nest Boxes
Katherine Stitt (Classical Studies)
The Life Cycle of an Archive: The Archive of Aurelius Sakaon
Peter Silverstein (Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences)
Evaluating RapidRide Bus Reliability in Seattle, WA, Using Bayesian Additive Regression Trees
Isabelle Goslan (Human Rights Studies)
Women as Architects of Peace: Examining the Role of Female Mediators in Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding
Alena Struzh (Russia, Eurasia, and Eastern Europe Regional Studies)
Exile and Engagement: The Role of Host States in Russian Migrants’ Political Behavior
Zhuoyuan Chen (Economics)
How Did Germany’s Medical Reform in the Late 1990s Impact German People’s Health and Economic Conditions?
Kirill Shabalin (South Asian Studies)
What Did India’s Political Parties Say About Citizenship in 2019?
Teresa Mondría Terol (Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences)
You Only Get One Chance to Make a Good Impression: The Key to Reader Retention in Local Journalism
Emmanuela Douyon (Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Studies)
Fleeing a Nation on the Brink: Haitian Migration in the First Quarter of the 21st Century
Siyu Hua (Sociology)
“Tears in Rain”: Liminal Spaces during Human-Robot Interactions in Science Fiction Films from the 1960s to 2000s
Kimberley Snijders (Global Thought)
Entrepreneurship as Freedom? Interrogating the Role of Entrepreneurship as a Tool to Advance Gender Equality in International Development
