Dr Anna Strhan from the Department of Religious Studies has just published a new book entitled Aliens & Strangers? The Struggle for Coherence in the Everyday Lives of Evangelicals (Oxford University Press, 2015).

The book is an ethnographic study of a conservative evangelical Anglican church in London, and examines evangelical relational practices and everyday interactions in a cosmopolitan, global city. St John’s is a vibrant church, with a congregation of young and middle-aged members, one in which the life of the mind is important, and faith is both a comfort and a struggle – a way of questioning the order of things within society and for themselves. The congregants of St John’s as in wider media portraits of conservative evangelicals – see themselves as increasingly counter-cultural, moving against the grain of contemporary culture in London and in British society, yet they also take pride in this, and see it as a central element of being Christian.

The book reveals the processes through which the congregants of St John’s learn to understand themselves as ‘aliens and strangers’ in the world, demonstrating the precariousness of projects of staking out boundaries of moral distinctiveness in a global metropolis. Through focusing on their interactions within and outside the church – including their experience of a relationship with God, which shapes their desire for coherence – Anna shows how the everyday experiences of members of St John’s are simultaneously shaped by the secular norms of their workplaces and other city spaces and by moral and temporal orientations of their faith that rub against these.

For more details about the book, please see the publisher’s page here:
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780198724469.do

A new collection of plays reflecting aspects of life in the Middle East has recently been compiled and edited by Ken Pickering, Hon Professor of Drama at Kent. Among the plays included is ‘Bitterest of Foes’: a remarkable play by Josh Hinds that deals with the demise of the Ottoman Empire. Josh graduated with an M.Dram degree from Kent in 2014 and has subsequently enjoyed increasing success as playwright.

The entire play collection is called ‘Sykes-Picot: the Legacy’and is published by Arts Canteen and available from Amazon for £7.99. Professor Ken Pickering, its Editor is a prolific writer and has taught numerous Modules in Drama for the last ten years at Kent but this new book is the first in which he has been able to include the work of a recent student alongside plays by authors of international reputation.

SharePoint will be unavailable on Thursday 2 July from 08:00 – 13:00 and maybe into the afternoon if work takes longer than expected.

Save a copy of any files today that you might want to access tomorrow.

We need to apply monthly updates to SharePoint. We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused – we chose this date/time in conjunction with departments to try and minimise impact.

The next monthly update will be on 30 July. All IT maintenance is advertised on advanced on Service Alerts.

Yesterday we received the very sad news that our colleague and friend Isabel Noble (Izzy) died. Izzy was one of our longest serving members of staff at Gulbenkian with more than 30 years’ service. We were all very lucky to know and work with her and are fortunate that she has given all who worked and knew her so many happy memories. Our thoughts are with those closest to her. In recognition of a life that touched so many of us, the Registry flag is being flown at half-mast.

Liz Moran,
Director of Gulbenkian

The funeral for David Ashworth will take place at Barham Crematorium on Friday 10 July at 2.40pm.

Professor Mike Fairhurst, a former colleague in the School of Engineering and Digital Arts, has written the following tribute:

‘All who knew Dr David Ashworth were shocked and immensely saddened to hear recently that he had died in a brave attempt to rescue a member of the public involved in an accident. David was a long-standing member of the Department of Electronics (later to become the School of Engineering and Digital Arts, its present name) and, indeed, was one of its earliest academic appointments, joining the University almost from its inception. He retired in 2005, but maintained regular contact with the University.

‘Generations of David’s students will have fond memories of a skilful, kind and sympathetic teacher who was unstinting in the time and support he gave to those he taught, and his ability to make them feel that he was as much their friend as their teacher. In research, David was one of the early collaborators with Roger Jennison, founding Professor in the Department, cheerfully and expertly grappling with some of the more abstruse mathematical problems in relativity and physical electronics. His colleagues will remember him as an outgoing, reliable, conscientious and thoroughly committed member of the academic community, always playing a key part in smooth operation of the Department, and his legendary long service as Undergraduate Admissions Officer was, as one colleague once put it, the engine room of the Department for many years.

‘That it was his act of kindness towards someone in need of help which led to David’s untimely death makes this all the more tragic, yet is entirely characteristic of him. We will miss him for his warmth, his easy friendship and his generosity of spirit, and we will remember him as a talented academic and a much-valued colleague and friend.’

On 13 June 2015 almost exactly 800 years after the signing of Magna Carta, 161 participants including law alumni, local judges, leading QCs, barristers, law firms, staff, students and friends of the University, took part in the first Canterbury Legal Walk in aid of the Kent Law Campaign.

The Walk is one of a series of 10km sponsored walks held throughout England and Wales and takes place annually after the London Legal Walk which celebrated its 11th Anniversary this year. The Canterbury Legal Walk, a 10km walk around the city of Canterbury and Kent’s Canterbury campus, was organised by the University to raise funds to help build the new Kent Law Clinic, our special thanks go to The London Legal Support Trust, The Law Society and The Access to Justice Foundation for helping us make this event possible.

Sponsorship is still being received but we estimate that the walk will have raised over £8K for the Kent Law Campaign.

Tomorrow morning there will be an interruption to printers that require staff to swipe or login, and to printing, scanning and photocopying in the Templeman Library.

Printing photocopying and scanning using printers that need you to swipe/Kent login:

• won’t work tomorrow morning between 08.00 and 09.30
• may be offline until 11:00 if the work runs over.

If your printer has an alternative print queue, that doesn’t need you to log in, that queue will work.

More details:
http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/isnews/printing-interruptions-0800-1100-on-mon-30-june/

If you have any questions or concerns, email helpdesk@kent.ac.uk

Last year as part of an AUA event hosted by Kent, Sandra Henry, a School Manager at the University of Sheffield, presented the conference session she ran entitled Staff on the Naughty Step: Dealing with Counterproductive Workplace Behaviour. The session looked at how to deal with counterproductive workplace behaviour, potential bad behaviour that happens in the workplace from mild to severe, with practical advice and ideas for managers. The session was well received and Sandra has kindly agreed to come back and provide another opportunity for people to attend this interesting session.

Spaces are limited and bookings will be taken on a first come first served basis and should be made by emailing ldev@kent.ac.uk by Friday 10 July 2015 – upon confirmation details of the room will be provided.