The Q-Step team is pleased to announce its autumn series of pubTALK nights.

‘pubTALK’ is a series of informal talks about real-world issues, held on the first Thursday of every month (19.00 to 21.00) at The Jolly Sailor, 75 Northgate, Canterbury.

Each month, we have an expert giving a talk on a social issue and then the floor is open up to discussions all whilst enjoying a drink or two! The talk is for staff, students, the general public -anyone who is interested is welcome to attend.

Our first talk on Thursday 6 October is by Dr Amir-Homayoun Javadi on ‘the pursuit of the super you’, who will be discussing whether we should (or should not) use electrical brain stimulation to make a super-you.

This will be followed on Thursday 3 November by a discussion on ‘the importance of the social sciences in vaccine uptake’ by our guest speakers, Richard Clark and Rose Wilson from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine on Thursday 3 November.

The last talk in this term’s series will be given on Thursday 1 December by Dr Tina Haux on the subject of ‘lone parents and welfare reform’.

As always, the evenings are free to attend (although you do need to pay for your own drinks!) and all are welcome to stay behind to continue the discussions afterwards. You can get up-to-date information via our website or by joining our mailing list: qstep-events@kent.ac.uk.

If you have any questions, please feel free to get in touch.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Keli Jenner/ Joe Warriner
E-mail: qstepinfo@kent.ac.uk

As a corporate member, the University has been offered two top tickets for the Marlowe Theatre’s birthday celebrations – and we’re offering them as a prize for a lucky member of staff.

The Marlowe Theatre’s 5^th Anniversary Gala Performance on Sunday 9 October will feature world-class companies and performers who have appeared at the theatre over the last five years.

Highlights include Chicago, The Bodyguard, the National Theatre presenting extracts from War Horse; the Royal Shakespeare Company performing scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Northern Ballet performing selections from their new ballet Jane Eyre; and players from the Philharmonia Orchestra. There will also be special appearances from top TV personalities Stephen Mulhern, Phil Gallagher and Shaun Williamson and the event will be compered by pantomime star Ben Roddy.

Together with the top tickets, our staff prize will include two invitations to the post-performance fizz and canape reception.

If you would like a chance of winning the tickets, send an email marked ‘Marlowe Gala Tickets’ to communications@kent.ac.uk by the end of Monday 26 September. The winner will be selected at random by a member of Corporate Communications in Registry Extension R155 on Tuesday 27 September at 12.00.

If you aren’t lucky enough to win the top tickets, tickets are still available for the gala performance, priced £35-£75, via the Marlowe Theatre’s Box Office on 01227 787 787.

The University is delighted to be part of a consortium awarded Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership funding to implement a project designed to improve the quality and relevance of higher education in the field of European and International Criminology.

The project, co-ordinated by the Erasmus University Rotterdam will support the development of a Joint Research Master’s degree in Border Crossing, Security and Social Justice.

It was with great sadness that the University learned of the death of founding staff member David Millyard on 15 September, following a short illness.

David was one of the now few remaining early members of staff who came to Canterbury in August 1963 to set up the University in Westgate House, in St Dunstan’s.  David was appointed as an assistant to David Edwards, the Deputy Registrar (Buildings), with whom he had worked at the University of Oxford. Three weeks later, Jane Millyard (then Carvosso) arrived at Westgate House, the first member of the academic administration. David and Jane married in 1965, billed in the Kentish Gazette as the first ‘University romance’!

Denis Linfoot, former Academic Registrar, writes: ‘David was very much involved in the building and establishment of the first colleges, but in October 1967 he moved into the Academic Division of the Registry, when he was appointed Assistant Registrar. David was appointed Academic Secretary in 1968, and continued in this office until his retirement in 1990. As Academic Secretary, he was responsible – with the support of Assistant Registrars – for all the administrative aspects of the students’ academic life, including student recruitment and admissions, teaching timetables, examinations and the formal appointment of examiners.

‘David was also in effect the Registrar’s deputy as secretary of the Court, Council, Senate, and – until the mid-1980s – the Faculty Boards, and of many of their committees, including for example appointments committees, and of a long succession of strategy and planning groups, in all of which his wise and well-considered views and advice were always welcome.’

A service of celebration of David’s life will take place at St Peter’s Church, Bekesbourne at 15.00 on Friday 30 September. The family request no mourning clothes be worn.

Baroness Hale of Richmond, the Deputy President of The Supreme Court and the most senior female judge in the UK, will speak about human rights and social justice in a talk to be delivered on Kent’s Canterbury campus on Thursday 6 October.

The talk, open to all, will explore the scope for protection of socio-economic rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.
Earlier in the day, Lady Hale will also open the Wigoder Law Building together with alumnus and major supporter The Hon Charles Wigoder. The £5 million building is the new home for Kent Law Clinic, a partnership between students, academics and local solicitors and barristers providing legal advice and representation to people in the local community who couldn’t otherwise afford to pay for it. The new building provides expanded facilities for Law Clinic staff, students and clients on the ground floor together with new facilities for Kent Law School’s active mooting programme on the first floor, including judges’ chambers, a robing room and a replica courtroom.

Lady Hale https://www.supremecourt.uk/about/biographies-of-the-justices.html became the UK’s first woman Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in 2004 and the first woman Justice of The Supreme Court in 2009. She was appointed Deputy President of The Supreme Court in June 2013 and was assessed as the fourth most powerful woman in the UK by BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.

Lady Hale’s talk will be held in Woolf Lecture Theatre at 18.00 https://www.facebook.com/events/570550449806415/ (and not at 17.00 as first advertised).

Ben Hutchinson, Professor of European Literature in the Department of Modern Languages, has just published a new book entitled Lateness and Modern European Literature (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Modern European literature has traditionally been seen as a series of attempts to assert successive styles of writing as ‘new’. In this groundbreaking study, Prof. Hutchinson argues that literary modernity can in fact be understood not as that which is new, but as that which is ‘late’. Exploring the ways in which European literature repeatedly defines itself through a sense of senescence or epigonality, Hutchinson shows that the shifting manifestations of lateness since romanticism express modernity’s continuing quest for legitimacy. With reference to a wide range of authorsfrom Mary Shelley, Chateaubriand, and Immermann, via Baudelaire, Henry James, and Nietzsche, to Valary, Djuna Barnes, and Adorno he combines close readings of canonical texts with historical and theoretical comparisons of numerous national contexts. Out of this broad comparative sweep emerges a taxonomy of lateness, of the diverse ways in which modern writers can be understood, in the words of N ietzsche, as ‘creatures facing backwards’. Ambitious and original, Lateness and Modern European Literature offers a significant new model for understanding literary modernity.

For a short introduction to the book, please see: http://blog.oup.com/2016/09/modern-aging-world/

University Campaigns Manager Anna Pollard is set to run a half-marathon in aid of charity and is on the look-out for sponsors.

She says: ‘You may have noticed me donning some rather fetching running gear of late and ‘sprinting’ off into the sunshine after work! The reason is that I’ll be running the Royal Parks Half Marathon on Sunday 9 October in aid of Tommy’s, a fantastic charity which funds vital research into the prevention of baby loss in pregnancy and premature birth.

‘I’m doing my best to train when I can but unfortunately my hip and knees are not happy about this so any desire for a specific time are now out of the window!

‘I would love it if you would consider sponsoring me to help me raise money for this important cause. You can do so online or on the paper form I’ve left in the Development Office (Registry Annex, Canterbury campus). I’ve also left a cardboard collection box there in case you have any loose change you’d like to get rid of.

Thank you so much for your support, I really appreciate it.  Now, does anybody fancy a lunchtime run…?!’