A Student Success (EDI) Project report into the Implementation, organisation and effectiveness of the academic adviser system at University of Kent, by Dr Alexander Hensby and Dr Lavinia Mitton is now available on the staff only section of the Student Success (EDI) website.

This report evaluates and makes recommendations about the current organisation and performance of the academic adviser system at University of Kent. Findings draw from a range of data, including student surveys and interviews, consultation with school project officers, and interviews with academic and support staff.

Please direct any comments or queries to Dr. Alexander Hensby

Dr Maria Mälksoo, Senior Lecturer in International Security, has been elected to the Governing Board of the European International Studies Association (EISA). EISA is Europe’s leading association for International Relations. In 2017 elections, 1614 members of the organisation cast their votes, electing six new members to the Governing Board. Dr Mälksoo was elected together with Prof. Anna Leander (Graduate Institute Geneva), Valeria Bello (United Nations University, Barcelona), Prof. Beate Jahn (University of Sussex), Anna Wojciuk (University of Warsaw) and Maj Grasten (Copenhagen Business School). Remaining board members are Prof. Mathias Albert (University of Bielefeld), Victoria Basham (Cardiff University), Raquel Freire (University of Coimbra), Prof. Jef Huysmans (Queen Mary, University of London), Ole Jacob Sending (NUPI) and Benjamin Tallis (IIR, Prague). The new board will be ratified at the General Assembly in the upcoming 11th Pan-European Conference on International Relations in Barcelona in September 2017 where Dr Mälksoo will also present two papers and appear in a roundtable discussion on ‘The Role of Professional Associations beyond the Ivory Tower’.

Information Services staff have won an award for their inventive work improving reading lists.

The Reading List team won a Talis Aspire User Group Creativity Award 2017 for two pieces of work:

Making reading lists more accessible

The team worked with staff in Student Support and Wellbeing to improve the way students with individual learning plans (ILPs) access their resources through the Reading List service. Since September 2016, we have texts in accessible formats for 63 reading lists.

This was part of the OPERA accessibility project.

Better reading lists make better modules

The team engaged with our academic community, using data to show a correlation between reading list availability and student Module Evaluation scores.

This award from Talis, the company that provides our reading list software, recognises an original idea or inventive approach to a process or technology, which made an improvement.

Pictured: Louise Price and Justine Rush from Academic Liaison Services receiving the award.

The shortlist for the 2017 Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction literature has now been announced. Dr Paul March-Russell, Specialist Associate Lecturer in the Department of Comparative Literature and editor of Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction is on the panel of judges for the award this year.

The six shortlisted books for the best science-fiction novel published in 2016 are:

• A Closed and Common Orbit – Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton)
• Ninefox Gambit – Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris)
• After Atlas – Emma Newman (Roc)
• Occupy Me – Tricia Sullian (Gollancz)
• Central Station – Lavie Tidhar (PS Publishing)
• The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead (Fleet)

The six titles were selected from a list of 86 individual eligible submissions.

Chair of the judges, Dr Andrew M Butler commented: ‘Every year our industrious judges sift through scores of novels to pick six to represent the state of the science fiction (sf) field. They’ve chosen a first timer and a previous winner, as well as writers in the process of building great reputations. Any of these could win – at this point I cannot begin to guess.’

Dr Paul March-Russell added: ‘There’s no one dominant theme amongst the nominees, which I think is a reflection of the current state of sf. Instead, there’s everything, from a Pulitzer Prize-winning alt-history about slavery to high-octane military sf, from posthuman cyber-thrillers to trans-dimensional angels. It’s a remarkably diverse list – in all senses – and it should bring many new readers to the genre.’

The winner will be announced at a public award ceremony held in partnership with Foyles Bookshop, London, on Thursday 27 July 2017.

Further details of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the shortlist are available at: www.clarkeaward.com

Joanne Warner is one of four editors of a new publication entitled Mental Health Policy and Practice. It examines the ways in which the narrow focus on specific kids of risk, such as violence towards others, perpetuates the social disadvantages experienced by mental health service users whilst, at the same time, ignoring the vast array of risks experienced by the service users themselves.

The book is the culmination of collaborative research with the ‘Prato Group’, an international groups of academics and others whose shared aim is to challenge the dominant paradigm of risk that pervades human welfare services across Europe, North America and Australasia. This work began at a Colloquium in Prato, Italy in May 2012 and has resulted in the publication of a new series of books, ‘Beyond the risk paradigm’. There are also books on child protection and criminal justice in the series.

You can read more about the contents of the book on the publisher’s website.

Dr Joanne Warner is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work within the School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Research, specialising in sociological approaches to risk in health and social care.

Dr Joanne Pettitt, Associate Lecturer in the Department of Comparative and World Literature, has just published a new book Perpetrators in Holocaust Narratives: Encountering the Nazi Beast (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

The book provides a comprehensive analysis of representations of Holocaust perpetrators in literature. Such texts, often rather controversially, seek to undo the myth of pure evil that surrounds the Holocaust and to reconstruct the perpetrator in more human (‘banal’) terms. Following this line of thought, protagonists frequently place emphasis on the contextual or situational factors that led up to the genocide. A significant consequence of this is the impact that it has on the reader, who is thereby drawn into the narrative as a potential perpetrator who could, in similar circumstances, have acted in similar ways. The tensions that this creates, especially in relation to the construction of empathy, constitutes a major focus of this work. Making use of in excess of sixty primary sources, this work explores fictional accounts of Holocaust perpetration as well as Nazi memoirs. It will be of interest to anyone working in the broad areas of Holocaust literature and/or perpetrator studies.

For full details of the book, please see the publisher’s  web page.

Study Plus courses are FREE to all Kent students. They are short courses and workshops, ranging from a couple of hours to several days.

If you have summer travel plans, learn some useful phrases before you go, with Spanish (KE089), Japanese (KE090) or Arabic (KE091) for travel. You can take a beginners’ course in Business Mandarin (KE007). These courses have started, but you may still join in Week 26 (16 May).

If you already speak some Mandarin, you could take Discover Chinese Language and Culture (KE088), which starts on 23 May (Week 27).

If you’re looking to improve your employment prospects, look no further than KE043 – Employability Skills.

Our intensive 5-day course: Journalism (KE044) gives you the chance to experience the pressure and the pleasure of making real journalism to real deadlines under professional leadership.

Post grad students can also sign up for Who are you? Improving your prospects by knowing your strengths (KE094).

Dirty History (KE004) will appeal to Game of Thrones fans and anyone interested in separating medieval fact from fantasy, but hurry, as it is on Saturday 13 May.

Big Ideas (KE128-KE131) is a series of 4 stand alone workshops offering an introduction to western philosophy.

You can sign up for a course via Workshops in the Student Data System. Please make sure that you are definitely able to do the course before signing up for it!
Find out more about Study Plus here.

https://www.kent.ac.uk/studyplus/

Medway staff and students, please join us in celebrating IDAHOT 2017 at Medway on Wednesday 17 May by wearing the rainbow please dress in colourful clothes and if you can, please make a donation. There will also be a stand with information and goodies in The Deep End Front Social Space in the Student Hub, from 10.00-14.00 on Wednesday 17 May. Donation boxes will also be in the Gillingham and Medway reception areas and in G0-05.

All funds raised will go to METRO Charity:
METRO Youth is a charity supporting LGBTQ+ young people in Medway and across Kent and London, providing free counselling and support for anyone experiencing issues around sexuality, gender, equality, diversity or identity.

METRO Stand Out is a weekly group meeting in Rochester every other Tuesday 18.00-20.00 for young people aged 16-25 in Medway.
For more information, visit http://metrocharity.org.uk/services/youth

Summer Music Week is your chance to enjoy a range of musical styles from our talented students, staff and the local community. Bringing you a glimpse of what’s on offer throughout the year, from classic swing tunes and forgotten gems to more recent popular music. Join us to celebrate music at Kent.

Find a list of performances and further details.

Tickets are now on sale for bOing! and with performers from The Netherlands, Portugal, Norway, Finland and the UK confirmed to headline its set to be another outstanding weekend.

On Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 August 2017, the annual bOing! International Family Festival will once again host some of the most innovative and exciting performances for two days of multi-sensory fun.

The programme boasts a number of new performances and also welcomes back some bOing! regulars. All offering mesmerising, high-energy entertainment.

For more details about performances and to buy tickets please visit the festival website http://boingfestival.com