Audrey Antoine

How many times have our friends or family insisted for us to explain our PhD topic, only to conclude with something like: « Yeah…I didn’t understand one bit of it ». I always think of what my dad once told me: “If you can’t explain your work to everyone, it means you don’t really understand it.”

A charming idea, but also completely unrealistic. For anyone to understand my exact topic, I would have to start the explanation from the very beginning of my studies (If I’m lucky enough that my public hasn’t stopped taking maths courses at 13). And to my Dad: I’m still at the start of my PhD… of course I don’t fully understand it yet. I even wonder if anyone ever truly feels like they “master” anything in research.

In this talk, I’ll try explaining my topic, the Geometric Manin’s conjecture, to different kinds of audiences. From a child to my supervisor, including to other domains like an analyst or an algebraist. And maybe even myself on a bad day.

Along the way, we’ll discuss one of the strange side effects of doing a PhD: slowly specializing yourself until you’re an expert on something that only a handful of people have heard of.