Dance Your PhD

Two Oxford archaeologists have won the first ever ‘Dance Your PhD’ contest, which was held in Vienna last month. Dr Brian Stewart, (with help from one Giulia Saltini-Semerari) won the first annual contest by translating his thesis: “Refitting repasts: a spatial exploration of food processing, sharing, cooking and disposal at the Dunefield Midden campsite, South Africa.” into dance.

No words, no figures, and definitely no PowerPoint is allowed in what may well become a new annual event in the academic calendar.

You can view videos of all of the contenders over at the Science Mag website from the AAAS.

Look out particularly for the two astrophysicists, Ruth Gruetzbauch and Jesús Varela, who present a thesis titled “The eventful life of galaxies in low density environments.” to the tune of an old Tango. There are three categories; students, postdocs and professors. If you’re studying, I recommend thinking about your entry in advance. some of these people really go for it!

Christoph Campregher started the event. In his day job as a molecular biology post-graduate student in Vienna, he studies the colorectal cancer. In the evenings he is an experimental DJ called Trockenmoos. The dance contest was actually the warm-up events for something called ‘Molecular Code’, a work he was staging that used only the sounds sampled in a molecular biology lab.

You can already sign up for the 2009 contest online.