Executive Group has agreed that staff may take appropriate time off to watch Euro 2016 matches during working hours, with the approval of their line manager.

Time off to watch Euro 2016 matches must be made up and should not affect key deadlines or the delivery of services to other staff, sponsors or students.

Managers are expected to be reasonable in allowing staff the option to watch matches. The Euros and similar events (eg the Olympics) only happen every four years and thus can be differentiated from annual sporting tournaments or cultural events such as Wimbledon (although managers are always able to use discretion in agreeing absence with staff).

It was also agreed that staff can wear football shirts of their favoured team on relevant match days although staff should consider whether this is appropriate if they are required to attend formal meetings with external visitors. If they are in doubt, they should consult their line manager.

Students: don’t get tricked by an email saying you’ve been awarded a grant from the Department for Education.

It claims to come from the University’s Finance Department, but it’s a scam attacking university students in the UK.

If you get this email:

• delete it
• don’t click any links in it. If you’ve clicked one, close the web page and don’t enter any personal information
• don’t reply. If you’re expecting a grant and want to check if the email you’ve received is real, contact the Finance Office directly

More email safety tips

• Advice from Action Fraud
• Is this email a fake?
• How to spot spam

Sent in by is-publishing@kent.ac.uk.

The University is absolutely delighted to have won Group Travel Organiser’s ‘Best University Accommodation for Groups’ award for an unprecedented ninth consecutive year.

Actor, humourist and writer Christopher Biggins, presented the award, for group accommodation on the University’s Canterbury campus, to members of its Conference, Reception and Housekeeping teams during a ceremony at held at the Park Plaza Riverbank Hotel in London on Friday 3 June.

Each year the readers of GTO Magazine are asked to vote for who they think are the best suppliers in more than 20 categories. From pre-visit information and transport to accommodation and attractions, all aspects of group travel are covered and the University of Kent has now won the ‘Best University Accommodation for Groups’ award every year since 2008.

Once again Kent had to fight off stiff competition from other competing universities, this year from Cardiff University, University of Exeter, University of Leicester, University of Portsmouth, St Aidan’s College at Durham University and the University of York.

Kevin Stuckey, Kent’s Head of Residences and Conference Services comments:

‘It’s absolutely terrific to win this award for the ninth consecutive year. It’s all the more special because it’s our clients who vote for us and we are so grateful to them for their continued support. On-going investment in our accommodation and facilities together with a fair pricing policy offering groups great value for money, are key reasons for our year-on-year success in attracting groups to the University. However, this outstanding achievement is first and foremost a great credit to our highly dedicated staff, who work so hard across campus to provide all our visitors with consistently high standards of service – year after year’.

During its spring and summer vacation periods, the University regularly hosts over 1,000 residential events and accommodates more than 135,000 delegates at its Canterbury campus.

For further information, contact Laura Evans or visit the Group Travel Awards website.

The Centre for Heritage, with funding from the Eastern Academic Research Consortium (ARC) Event Fund is hosting a conference on ‘Managing Change Urban Heritage Between Conservation and Development’ at the University of Kent on 20 and 21 June 2016 in Keynes Lecture Theatre 5.

The conference aims to facilitate a critical interdisciplinary dialogue that directly broaches emergent questions and research on the following issues:

• How do we both conserve urban sites and embrace development?
• What are the existing operational strategies for managing change and ‘preserving’ urban heritage in the long-term?
• What are the primary challenges that urban conservation currently faces?
• What role can digital technology play in this context?

The keynote speakers at the conference include Professor Elizabeth Brabec from UMass University and Dr Ana Pereira Roders from the Eindhoven University of Technology.

Further details and the full programme of events are available at: https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/managing-change/program-2/

The administration team in the School of Engineering & Digital Arts has been shortlisted for the prestigious, national Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Awards 2016.

This represents the fourth year running that a School administration team from Kent has been shortlisted in the category of Outstanding Departmental Administration Team.

In 2013, Schools across all three Faculties were shortlisted as a group. For the next two years, the School of Arts was on the awards shortlist, receiving a Highly Commended in 2015.

The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony in London on 23 June.

Congratulations and good luck to the team from EDA!

A one-day forum to launch Refugee Tales 2016 will take place at the University’s Canterbury campus on Sunday 3 July, from 10.00-20.00.

Organised by Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group and Kent’s School of English, the forum will explore how the issue of detention touches on wider human themes and the ways in which the practice of indefinite detention can be brought to an end.

Speakers will include those who have experienced indefinite immigration detention in the UK, support workers, campaigners, writers, academics, journalists and policy makers.

Confirmed speakers include: writers Ali Smith, David Herd, Marina Warner and Ben Okri; journalist Patrick Kingsley; and Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty 2003-16.

Further information and booking details on the one-day forum can be found on the Refugee Tales website.

Staff can benefit from a special ticket price of £20 plus £2.25 booking fee. When booking online, enter the code RT16KENT for the discounted ticket option to appear.

We are delighted to announce that the summer 2016 edition of KENT Alumni magazine is now available online.

This edition looks at how award-winning Kent bioscientists are working to develop a test that could change lives in developing nations, by diagnosing African sleeping sickness in its early, and most treatable, stages.

We also consider the impact that the EU has on life at the University by talking to staff, students and alumni on what being at the UK’s European university has meant to them.

You can also read the latest news from the colleges and find our more about the recently launched Refuge Fund.

If you have any feedback, or ideas for stories to cover in a future edition, please contact Julia Baxter on j.e.baxter@kent.ac.uk – we would love to hear from you!

Dr William Rowlandson, Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies in the Department of Modern Languages will be presenting a series of seminars at the Swedenborg Society during June.

The Swedenborg Society is a registered charity that organises events, lectures, conferences, exhibitions, performances, and film screenings, as well as publishing a large selection of literature, relating to the work of the philosopher, scientist, inventor, astronomer, mathematician, parliamentary figure and visionary Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).

The series of four seminars on ‘Swedenborg Literature and the Imaginal’ will draw on Swedenborg’s presence in Latin American Literature and will investigate the peculiar interrelationship of fiction and non-fiction as a means of exploring the imaginal.

The four seminars are:

• Week 1 (6 June) ‘So what is the Imaginal anyway?’
• Week 2 (13 June) ‘What is Borges?’
• Week 3 (20 June) ‘Praying for the souls of the fictional dead: Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo’
• Week 4 (27 June) ‘Magical Realism: Can the real be magic? Can magic be real?’

  Further details and how to register are available at: http://www.swedenborg.org.uk/events/talks_readings/6_13_20_27_june_2016_swedenborg_literature_and_the_imaginal_seminar_serie

Dr Jeremy Scott, Senior Lecturer in the Department of English Language & Linguistics, will be giving a keynote address at the conference ‘Intergrating English’ to be held at Middlesex University on Friday 8 and Saturday 9 July 2016.

Integrating English is a project that aims to develop new ways of understanding English, particularly through integrating the study of language and literature, and to promote stylistics as a discipline, so as to improve English in education at all levels. The conference will cover key areas of the English Language and Literature Key Stage 5 syllabus and this year will also explore ways of adapting the tools and concepts covered and using them to support learning at Key Stage 4 and below.

Jeremy’s talk is entitled ‘Integrating Creative Writing and English Language’, and he will argue that an understanding of stylistics has a great deal to offer the creative writer, the discussion and suggestions for practice are not intended to relate only to creative writing in the classroom, but also to the act of creative writing ‘at the coalface’. He aims to reverse the usual stylistic paradigm of post-event textual analysis and to instil ‘stylistic awareness’ at the forefront of the writing mind: in the act of creative writing itself.

For details about the conference, please see the Integrating English webpage here: www.integratingenglish.com/#!conference-2016/gci7v