The School of European Culture and Languages (SECL) is pleased to announce, as of 1 August 2015, the departments of French, German, Hispanic Studies and Italian merged to form the Department of Modern Languages.

The new department, alongside continuing these separate subject areas, will encourage and enable cross-disciplinary research and teaching, with staff and students benefitting from the expertise gained in other cultures and languages. As well as the four subject areas offered by the previous departments, the European Studies programmes will also be based within Modern Languages.

The department will showcase the strengths of languages at Kent, following on from the recent success of the combined languages submission to Research Excellence Framework, which placed Kent 3rd in the UK last year (REF2014).

Dr Tom Baldwin, the new Head of the Department, said of the launch: ‘The combination of the five subject areas together will strengthen our skills, resources and interdisciplinary nature, consolidating Kent’s position as the UK’s European university.’

Full details of the department, its programmes and staff can be found at http://www.kent.ac.uk/secl/modern-languages/index.html.