Kent Law School begins a year of 50th anniversary events this term to mark 50 years since the graduation of its first cohort of law students.
In the summer of 1969 there were just 14 undergraduate students who graduated from Kent’s Faculty of Social Sciences with a BA (Hons) Law degree. Today, the total number of undergraduate and postgraduate law students graduating each summer at Kent has grown to almost 500.
Over the last 50 years, Kent Law School has gained an excellent international reputation for the provision of critical legal education and for its interdisciplinary socio-legal research – ranked in the top 20 of all three major UK league tables, the Law School is also: ranked 50th in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings for law 2018; among the top 100 law schools in the world in the Shanghai Ranking’s Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2017; among the top 150 law schools in the world in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2018; and, in the most recent Research Excellence Framework, is ranked 8th for research intensity in the Times Higher Education.
The Law School’s first 50th anniversary event, open to all, is a special guest lecture to be delivered by Chief Crown Prosecutor Grace Ononiwu OBE at 6pm on Thursday 27 September in Woolf Lecture Theatre.
The following month, Dr Jason Arday will deliver a keynote talk on diversity as part of a special launch event for ‘Decolonising the Curriculum’, a research project led by Dr Suhraiya Jivraj. Dr Arday, a Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Roehampton, has conducted extensive research in race, education and social justice and will be encouraging black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) students at Kent Law School to get involved with Dr Jivraj’s project to explore how the curriculum can be made more inclusive. Anyone wishing to attend the talk at 2.30pm on Wednesday 10 October in GLT2 is asked to register online in advance (attendance is free).
On Thursday 15 November, HHJ David Griffiths Jones, Resident Judge Maidstone Crown Court, will be speaking about his ‘Reflections on the law; a personal view’ for the annual Tucker Millward Lecture. The event, co-hosted with Kent Law Society, will be held at 6pm in Grimond Lecture Theatre 1 (GLT1).
Further events planned throughout the coming academic year include an inspirational talk by Lemn Sissay, Chancellor of the University of Manchester and Canterbury Poet Laureate, and an alumni networking event in London during the spring term. A special celebratory event will coincide with the graduation of law students in July 2019 and a commemorative book, featuring interviews with former staff and students together with archive photos from across the years, will be available to purchase next summer.
We’ll be posting more details of each event in due course but, if you’re an alumni and would like to keep in touch, please take a moment to complete the University’s online contact form so that we can send all the information direct to your inbox!
