We are delighted to announce that four members of Kent Hospitality’s Housekeeping team have been accredited as BICs Assessors. They are Chris Scrutton, Donna Brown, Elizabeth Arbus and Hayley Blindell. This means that Kent Hospitality is now a fully accredited centre for the delivery and provision of BICs training.

This fantastic achievement comes after much hard work, training and many hours of assessment by Chris, Donna, Elizabeth and Hayley, and Chris will co-ordinate the programme for approximately 150 members of the Housekeeping team. Tribute is also paid to Becky Verlin who has led the project over a number of months and who has been responsible for setting up and facilitating the programme.

Congratulations to everyone involved.

On 13 March, SMFA Senior Lecturer in Fine Art and acclaimed award-wining contemporary visual artist, Adam Chodzko, joins Cornelia Parker OBE, RA and Bob and Roberta Smith, RA for a panel discussion of former British School at Rome artist award-holders as they reflect on the impact of their time in Rome on their subsequent careers. Chaired by celebrated art historian, writer and curator Dawn Ades, the event Inspiring visual art: a view from Rome takes place from 18.00-19.30 in London – more info here http://www.britac.ac.uk/events/inspiring-visual-art-view-rome

From 1 April, Adam Chodzko also has work in group exhibition Offshore: artists explore the sea at Ferens Art Gallery and Hull Maritime Museum, until 28th August and Sounding the Sea Symposium 15 to 16 June. This major new exhibition, part of Hull UK City of Culture 2017, is curated by Invisible Dust and will include new and existing works by internationally-renowned artists. It examines people’s relationship to the oceans as a source of food and energy, a dumping ground for waste and the reference point for many of our most haunting and significant myths. Through a range of media these artists pose questions about our connection to and use of the sea. Invisible Dust has developed relationships between some of the artists with marine biologists and ecologists from Oxford, Southampton and Hull Universities. Being informed and influenced by the science is providing new stimulus to the artists’ ideas. More info at http://invisibledust.com/project/offshore-artists-explore -the-sea/
Exhibiting internationally since 1991, Adam Chodzko works across media, from video installation to subtle interventions, with a practice that is situated both within the gallery and the wider public realm. http://www.adamchodzko.com

Professor Ian Beckett has accepted an invitation to join the judging panel for the prestigious Lehrman Institute-New York Historical Society Military History Prize, which awards $50,000 prize each year for the best book published on military history in the English language. Professor Beckett joins the historian and broadcaster Professor Andrew Roberts; the American historical biographer, Flora Fraser; General Josiah Bunting III, President of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation of New York; and Professor Allen Guelzo of Gettysburg College. For the last three years Professor Beckett has also been on the judging panel for the Templer Medal of the Society for Army Historical Research, which offers annual prizes to the best book and best first book published on British military history.

Thursday 9 March – Friday 10 March 2017

On the afternoon of Thursday 9 March and the morning of 10 March, new mail franking equipment is being installed in the Estates Post Room.

It is likely that at times it will not be possible to process post using Royal Mail services and we would advise that any urgent items (particularly Special Delivery) that must be posted on Thursday are sent to the Post Room before 12.00.

Standard Airmail, postage-paid, and DHL/Parcelforce items will not be affected.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and if you have any further queries please contact Estates Postal Services on ext. 3210

Ashford based rapper/singer songwriter Fennie Dizzle has recently signed a recording contract with SMFA’s Fire Station Commercial Music Studio. Says Phil Marsh, Studio Manager, ‘We are excited to be working with Fennie. Recording will commence at the end of April looking towards an early summer release date.’

Of the project, Fennie says: ‘This is a Rap and Alternative R&B project from my EP Open With Caution (OWC). It’s a live instrumentation version of a select few songs from the EP. With the Band exploring different rhythms and arrangements compared to the software instruments version of the EP.

The Message behind Open With Caution is pretty straight forward. I come from a place where I’ve always had to keep up a certain persona and appearance because of my religious background, family and social surroundings like many people do, so OWC is just me being free to talk about some of the things other people may not have thought I do, feel or see, hence the term ‘Open With Caution’.’

You can contact Fennie via @FendizzleTNC and https://www.facebook.com/FendizzleTNC and https://www.youtube.com/user/MrFenDizzle

Kay Guccione from the University of Sheffield will present the CSHE Research Seminar on ‘More than lucky? Exploring self-leadership in the development and articulation of research independence’.

The seminar will take place on Thursday 16 March 2017,16.30-17.30 in the UELT Seminar Room (Canterbury Campus)

The stories of research fellowships that the researcher community tells can sometimes become barriers to academic career aspirations. Fellowship award success is often largely attributed to luck, both by award holders themselves and also by aspiring fellows. However, it is unlikely that success is due to luck alone.

This seminar presents findings from a research study designed to enquire into early career researcher experiences of gaining a research fellowship award within UK academic career pathways by collecting and comparing twenty-five “fellowship stories” that ask about the decisions, actions, tensions, and agency of early career researchers. The five areas of active self-development that were identified in the data, will be discussed, as we ask ourselves what can we as academics, mentors, PIs and policy makers do to help our researchers succeed?

To confirm your attendance at this event please email cpdbookings@kent.ac.uk

Marc Schuilenburg of VU University, Amsterdam will talk about his latest book, ‘The Securitization of Society’. Marc will explore the relationship between government and security assemblages. Along the way we will encounter Schrödinger’s Cat and the art of Jean Tinguely.

All are welcome to join us for this free research event hosted by SSPSSR’s Crime Culture and Control Research Cluster.

17.00 Wednesday 22 March 2017
Marlowe Lecture Theatre 2

The event, ‘Women who Changed the Course of History’, will celebrate three female historical figures; Emily Wilding Davison, Mary Queen of Scots and Pocahontas, for which our historians will champion their case to determine who you think deserves the title of the most inspirational historical woman.

The event will take place from 16.30-17.30 in Woolf Lecture Theatre on our Canterbury campus, is free and open to all, and will be followed by a drinks reception.

“What place is this, what land, what quarter of the globe?” : The Compass of Story in Dislocated Times

Professor Marina Warner (Birkbeck College London)

Wednesday 15 March 2017 @ 18.30, Grimond Lecture Theatre 1
(Followed by a reception in Grimond Foyer)

To attend this event please book online.

T. S. Eliot’s question, inspired by Shakespeare’s Pericles, arises from circumstances of utter loss, disorientation, shipwreck and near-death on arrival in a strange new place. But even when stripped of all outward possessions and even identity, every arrivant is still thebearer-being of culture, stories, and memories. To quote another poet, Cavafy, we all carry our Ithakas with us: walls and borders have very little power over our minds, and stories travel the world regardless of religion, race, or even language. Against the background of the current refugee crisis, Marina Warner will look at migrating stories, from myths of Troy to Eliot’s uses of Christian legend, and trace the compass bearings they offer.

Marina Warner is a writer of fiction and cultural history principally inspired by myth and fairy tale. Her books include Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (l976), Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism (l982) and Monuments & Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (l988). In l994 she gave the BBC Reith Lectures on the theme of Six Myths of Our Time.

Marina Warner is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, a Professorial Research Fellow, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, a Fellow of the British Academy, a Commendatore nellá Ordine della Stella di Solidareità , a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and DBE. She was given the Holberg Prize in the Arts and Humanities in 2015.

The event is co-sponsored by Eliot College and the Centre for Postcolonial Studies.