Seminar requirements
Last reviewed 17 September 2026
Times and rooms for each term are on the seminar schedule. If you join online, the presenter provides the Zoom link.
Who does what
| Who | Presentations | Discussant duty | Attendance |
|---|---|---|---|
| PhD Years 1–3 | Two a year | For one presenter a year, at both of their talks | At least 80% |
| PhD Year 4 | Two job market talks, in Terms 1 and 2 | None | At least 80% |
| MPDBS students | None | None | At least 80% |
Presentations, discussant duty and attendance are all part of your confirmation and annual progress review milestones. If your attendance is below 80%, you must give the Postgraduate Research Coordinator (PGRC) a justification.
Dates are allocated by the PGRC in coordination with the PhD student representative. You can swap slots if both presenters agree and the PGRC approves.
Giving a presentation
- Two weeks before, send your title and abstract to Sussan Su (q.su@unsw.edu.au) and to econ.hdr@unsw.edu.au, so that invitations can be sent to the faculty.
- One week before, send your material (draft paper and/or slides) to your discussant.
- Two days before, circulate your title, draft paper and slides to all PhD students and the PGRC. If your material is in the shared OneDrive folder, you can share it by email. In Outlook, the mailing list is #BUS School of Economics Research Students.
- On the day, present for 40 minutes, then leave 10–15 minutes for a discussion led by your discussant. Expect clarification questions from the audience as you go.
Talk to your discussant before your seminar. You will get more out of their feedback, and usually give a better talk.
- Invite at least one academic staff member. In your first year, invite one of your supervisors; from your second year, invite at least one academic who is not your supervisor. You may also invite people from other universities.
- You must present your own work. In your first year, you may present preliminary results or replication results.
- Your second presentation of the year revises your first, in response to the feedback you received; there are usually at least 10 weeks between them. Otherwise, you may not present a project you have presented at the PhD seminar before, unless you have significant new developments or it is your job market paper in Year 4.
Job market talks
Year 4 students present their job market paper twice, in Term 1 and Term 2, to prepare for job talks. A job market talk runs for 90 minutes. Expect lots of questions and discussion during your talk, so aim for a presentation of 70 to 75 minutes. There is no discussant, but faculty and PhD students will ask questions.
Being a discussant
- Your job is to give feedback, not to summarise the talk.
- Prepare a set of slides with a summary of the talk (one page at most), and constructive criticism and questions about the motivation and the results or their interpretation.
- At the presenter's second talk, keep track of the comments from the first, and comment on whether they have been addressed.
Everyone else
- Please engage actively in the presentation. Try to be as critical (note: not mean) as possible; bonus points if you can pick apart the substance of the paper, such as its motivation or contribution. The aim is to help the presenter improve their research as much as possible.
- If you attend via Zoom, you are expected to turn on your camera.