Monthly Archives: July 2015

William Rowlandson to talk at the Indiano Archive

Dr William Rowlandson from the Department of Hispanic Studies will be presenting at the annual summer conference at the La Fundación Archivo de Indianos in Colombres, near Santander, Spain on Friday 24 July 2015.

La Fundación Archivo de Indianos [The Foundation Indiano Archive] is housed at the Museum of Emigration. The principal objective of the Indiano Archive is the progressive accumulation of information and development of a museum about the phenomenon of Spanish emigration to South America.

William’s talk, entitled ”The Spanish Civil War and Revolution of Cuba by Ernest Hemingway’, evaluates Ernest Hemingway’s reactions to the Spanish Civil War and to the Cuban Revolution, and to the prevalence of certain motifs and narratives that bind the two conflicts in the writer’s work.

Further details about the the Indiano Archive can be found at www.archivodeindianos.es/

Ultimate Karate Fighter’s Boot Camp 2015

The University is proud to announce the Ultimate Karate Fighter’s Boot Camp will be hosted by Kent Sport from 31 July-2 August.

The event is led by Wayne Otto OBE 5th Dan, who is nine times World Champion, nine times European Champion, eighteen times English Champion and University of Kent alumni.

Also at the event will be Elisa Au Fonseca 5th Dan, three times World Champion, four times Pan American Champion, World Games Silver and Bronze Medalist and World Combat Games Silver Medalist. There will also be Alex Biamonti 5th Dan, six times World Champion, nineteen times European Champion, and eleven times French Champion.

The Boot Camp is for athletes with experience at regional, national or international level competitions, and will teach fitness and conditioning, training drills and routines, attacking and defensive techniques, fighting scenarios and strategies and more.

Visit the event web page

Registration online or at hall 3 office from Thursday 30 July.

Review of key administrative processes

The University has engaged PwC Consultants to undertake a review of our key administrative processes and to recommend how these might be improved to better support our students and staff. The review will also look at the implications for how we use our administrative resources to best support those processes.

This review is being undertaken against a challenging environment for the University, with expected cuts in funding and no increase in the £9k Home/EU undergraduate tuition fee since it was announced. In addition, there are large increases in our cost base occurring during 2015/16 and 2016/17, arising from the recent review of the University’s pension schemes and the Government’s removal of the contracting out national insurance rebate. These two latter costs will add about 4% (£5.1m) to our pay bill, before any cost of living and incremental increases to salaries are applied. As it has done successfully in the past, this university aims to respond by trying to increase income rather than focus on cost reductions in order to meet the shortfall between income and costs. Fortunately, we remain in a strong financial position and do not need to take drastic action in the near term, while we try and increase student numbers and research income. So far, applications for next year look robust and schools and professional support departments are working hard to increase home and overseas student numbers. A month ago, the University’s Governing Body, Council, agreed a budget that included additional investment in new academic buildings and a provision for strategic investment in new academic activity. This reflects a desire to continue to build upon our substantial progress over recent years and to reflect the confident ambition that is now becoming a feature of Kent, still based upon its collegial approach.

But while we focus on raising income to meet the forecast disparity between income and expenditure over the next few years, we cannot continue to raise our costs in line with the growth in income or the benefit of that income to our bottom line will be lost. As a result, we will increasingly have to focus on using our existing resources more efficiently as we grow and not waste money and time on processes that do not add value to our objectives and, in some cases, may prevent a timely and user focused delivery of administrative tasks.

PwC will be engaging with many members of staff during the course of their review and will be supported in the gathering of information by university employees. It is hoped that all those approached will enter into the spirit of identifying ways in which we can improve our services and administrative activities so that we can ensure that we have the flexibility to deal with additional external requirements and, more importantly, focus our endeavours on successfully delivering the new institutional plan, due in final form in October.

A short note describing in more detail the nature of the review is available here: http://www.kent.ac.uk/pdf/admin-processes-review-2015.pdf

A sharepoint site will be developed over coming weeks where further information and details of progress on the project can be obtained.

Denise Everitt,
Deputy Vice-Chancellor

Calling all would-be actors!

The University of Kent Players, made up of members of University staff, are holding an open audition for their next production.

The audition is this coming Monday (20 July) from 5.30pm onwards in Grimond Lecture Theatre 2. The play will take place from 21-24 October in the Gulbenkian Theatre and rehearsals will be Monday and Wednesday evenings, starting as soon as possible.

So, if you have a desire to tread the boards, or even if you would like to help behind the scenes, please email Zarina Hawkins for further details. It’s a lot of fun and great way to show colleagues a side of you they may never have known!

This will be the fourth production by the University of Kent Players, following the success of Terence Rattigan’s Flare Path and Agatha Christie’s A Murder is Announced in 2014 and Michael Cooney’s Cash on Delivery earlier this year.

London St Pancras to Margate train journey inspires art work

Downloadable as an App, the work by composer/artist Claudia Molitor will also go on display at the Turner Contemporary 20 June – 13 September.

Informed by trains, journeying and the disconnect between looking at the passing landscape and hearing only the interior sounds of the carriage, the piece – titled Sonorama – is described as ‘filling the gap between the visual and sonic realities of train travel’.

Imagining the journey as the ‘score’, Claudia Molitor’s  cycle of works, collected interviews, readings and British Library archive material respond to the social history of the route. The tracks cover topics as diverse as visio-centricity, Roman history and hop-picking – all relating to a different point or area between London St Pancras and Margate.

The App, which features contributions from flautist Jan Hendrickse, poet Lemn Sissay, saxophonist Evan Parker and writer Charlotte Higgins, will be free to download at the App store from 19 June – 30 September 2015.

Claudia Molitor lectures at the University’s School of Music and Fine Art.

Footsteps Project submission deadline 20 July

The Footsteps Project, which has raised over £25,000 for student scholarships, project funding and hardship bursaries through the Kent Opportunity Fund, will be completing its fourth stage on Monday 20 July.

Bricks ordered by midnight on the 20th will be set in the Crab & Winkle path in time for the University’s 50th Festival on 4-6 September 2015.

The Footsteps Project enables students, alumni and friends of the University to engrave a message on the new path by the Templeman Library and leave a lasting legacy at Kent. Not only will the path recognise all those who have made Kent what it is today, it will also support and inspire a future generation of students to follow in your footsteps.

Find out more and place your order via this website or emailing 50years@kent.ac.uk

Save on tickets for bOing! Family Festival 2015

bOing! family festival is back on 29 & 30 August 2015. Two days of brilliant creativity and fun for all ages here on campus – and all University staff are invited to be part of it.

Entry to bOing! is free, as are all of the outdoor performances and events – including the spectacular Motionhouse with their 3 dancing diggers that will perform by the Kent Wheel! http://tinyurl.com/gulbfragile

We also have ticketed events headlined by Spanish company Aracaladanza, with their beautiful show Nubes (Clouds). Tickets for shows are only £5/£8 but we also have a limited number of discounted bOing! packages when you book for 2 (£10) or 3 (£13) shows in advance.

If you missed bOing! last year it is such a great weekend to be on campus, so please come along and bring your family and friends (and their friends too!).

go to www.boingfestival.com to find out more or to book your tickets.

Changes to SAUL

Changes to future pension benefits, provided by SAUL (Superannuation Arrangements of the University of London) have been proposed by the SAUL Benefit Reform Committee to address the scheme deficit. The proposed date for change is 1 April 2016.

A period of consultation begins on 13 July between the University and affected staff and their representatives and is scheduled to end on 13 September.

A consultation document has been sent out to all affected members. Further information and other resources are available on the SAUL consultation website at www.saul.org.uk/consultation

Please check the Kent HR web pages for details of local events and resources.

Queries regarding the consultation process can be addressed to Wendy Green in the HR Department. Alan Gazzard and Tarnia Craswell from the Pensions Team are available to answer individual pension questions.

Templeman Library East Extension Lift – Temporarily Out Of Service

From 20th – 24th July 2015 between 8am – 4:30pm the library east extension lift will be taken out of service in order to install an air conditioning unit. The work will be carried out by engineers from Adcocks.

In addition to this on the 20th of July door rollers will also be installed, this work will be carried out by an engineer from Guideline Lifts.

The east extension basement fire exit will also be affected during this time, so please be aware of alternative emergency exits.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause, if you have any queries please contact the Estates Helpdesk on extn. 3209.

 

Kent hosts PALA 2015 conference

The University is delighted to be hosting the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA) 2015 International Conference on ‘Creative Style’, from 15-18 July 2015 in Woolf College.

PALA is the leading international academic association for those who work in stylistics, poetics, and associated fields of language and linguistics and the annual conference is the main event of the year for members.

This year’s conference has been organised by Dr Jeremy Scott, from the Department of English Language & Linguistics, and has over 180 delegates including high profile speakers such as Katie Wales (University of Nottingham) on ‘Thing Theory Meets Prosopodoeia’ and Michael Toolan (University of Birmingham) on ‘Harris and Leech on Creativity and the Teaching of Poetry’.

The conference also includes a series of special interest groups on Crime Writing, Pragmatic Literary Stylistics, Creative Writing, and Reader Response Research in Stylistics. Further details and the full programme of events can be found at http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/creative-style-conference

The PALA Conference will be preceded by a three-day summer school on critical stylistics, taught by leading scholars in the field and aimed at undergraduates and postgraduate students with interests in intersections between language and literature. Further details are available at: http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/creative-style-conference/crime-writing-sig/pala-summer-school/