Nominations are now open in the Kent Union Leadership Elections. During this period, students will nominate themselves for one of five positions: Union President, Vice-President (Activities), (Education), (Sports) and (Welfare).

In your role, chances are you’ve met some great students. We need your help to find our leadership team for 2018-19. If you know a student who’s been a fantastic Student Rep, has a great relationship with the Kent Sport team, displays key leadership skills or is passionate about the co-curricular experience on campus, then we want to hear about it! You can fill in our Looking for a Leader form, or get in touch with the elections team for assistance.

You can find out more information about the positions below. The work of the Union is guided by these student leaders, who ensure that the voice of the students is at the heart of the University.

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support, and if you are keen to know more about the Leadership Elections process, please don’t hesitate to get in touch by emailing elections@kent.ac.uk

The Department of Religious Studies is delighted to announce that alumni Robert Maguire, who graduated with a PhD in Theology and Religious Studies, has published material related to his research in the journal ‘Contemporary Buddhism’.

Contemporary Buddhism is an interdisciplinary journal that publishes articles on the current state and influence of Buddhism.

Robert’s doctoral project was entitled ‘The Madhyamaka Speaks to the West: A Philosophical Analysis of the Nature of Sunyata as a Universal Truth’. The article is entitled ‘An All-new Timeless Truth: A Madhyamaka Analysis of Conflict and Compromise in Buddhist Modernism’.

The article explores the argument put forward by Donald Lopez, who argues that we should reject the narrative of compatibility between Buddhism and science (as any apparent compatibility is achieved through a process of propositional compromise that sacrifices Buddhism’s distinctive content). This conclusion puts tension on the project within Buddhist modernism to formulate a form of Buddhism that functions within or alongside modern scientific paradigms. While agreeing with Lopez, Robert argues that this conclusion only holds under a particular epistemological assumption that is at odds with the Madhyamaka-Prāsaṅgika philosophy of śūnyatā, and suggests that a Madhyamaka analysis of the tensions in Buddhist modernism opens up the possibility of a friction-less pluralism between Buddhism and science.

You can access the article here.

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Professor Peter Clarkson (SMSAS) led a successful proposal for a SQuaRE (Structured Quartet Research Ensembles) research program at the American Institute of Mathematics, San Jose, CA together with Percy Deift (New York University, USA), Alexander Its (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, USA), Nalini Joshi (University of Sydney, Australia), Victor Moll (Tulane University, New Orleans, USA) and Tom Trogdon (University of California, Irvine, USA).

The program will take place at the American Institute of Mathematics, in February 2019. The topic of the program is “The Painleve Project” and the objective is to develop the research done by Peter Clarkson on Painleve equations which formed the basis for the SMSAS Impact Case “Public access to mathematical functions” in REF 2014.

The six Painleve equations were first discovered by the French Mathematician Paul Painleve, who later became Prime Minister of France, and colleagues in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In recent years the Painleve equations have emerged as the core of modern special function theory.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, classical special functions such as the Bessel, Airy, Legendre, and hypergeometric functions were studied in response to the problems of the day in electromagnetism, acoustics, hydrodynamics, elasticity and many other areas. Around the middle of the 20th century, as science and engineering continued to expand in new directions the Palnleve functions, appeared in applications. The list of problems now known to be described by the Palnleve equations is large, varied and expanding rapidly.

We are pleased to announce that Wilmott Dixon have this week commenced construction of the new Economics Building on the site of the now demolished Kent Research and Development Centre.

The project will complete in the spring of 2019. Access to the construction site is via the Sibson car park and we would ask that extra care and vigilance is taken when passing through this area.

If you have any queries or concerns regarding this project please contact the Estates Helpdesk on Extn 3209.

Mark Ashmore
Project Manager

SMFA Fine Art Senior Lecturer Adam Chodzko has a video work, About Knots, screened on 8 February at the Whitechapel Gallery. The screening is part of Refuge – an evening of films, sound-works and readings that mark Britain’s historic status as a place of sanctuary for threatened European artists.

About Knots focuses on the relationship between artist Kurt Schwitters in the final years of his life in the late 1940’s, living in poverty, (and exile) in the Lake District, and J. Edgar Kaufmann,  wealthy owner of the Kaufman Department Store in Pittsburgh, USA. The work combines text and moving image and creates a narrative about longing, creation and fragmentation, endings and beginnings.

Further information is available on the Whitechapel Gallery webpages.

SMFA Fine Art Lecturer and acclaimed artist, Adam Chodzko, is featured in new exhibition, The Ash Archive. The Archive, a collaboration between Kent and The Ash Project  examines the human relationship with the ash tree and woodlands.

Reflecting on the uncertain future of the ash tree, the exhibition brings together works by artists, designers and local makers which explore our dynamic and complex relationship with the life and death of the natural world.

Artists featured include Ackroyd & Harvey, Colin Booth, ,Sebastian Cox, French & Mottershead, Magz Hall, Max Lamb, David Nash (in collaboration with Common Ground), Autumn Richardson & Richard Skelton and Sheaf + Barley,  and there is a collection of objects made from ash wood from Rob Penn’s book The man who made things out of trees.

The Private View is on Thursday 18 January, 18.00-21.00, at Studio 3 Gallery, Jarman Building, School of Arts, Canterbury.  The exhibition runs until 14 April.

The exhibition is curated by Madeleine Hodge and Rose Thompson for The Ash Project in partnership with the University of Kent, and will tour galleries across Kent in 2018, including Limbo Gallery in Margate, Nucleus Arts in Chatham, UCA Brewery Tap in Folkestone as part of the Salt Festival and at Kaleidoscope Gallery in Sevenoaks.

The Ash Archive will grow over the course of the exhibition and the public are invited to make contributions of ash objects to the archive. The Ash Project is an urgent cultural response to the devastating loss of one of our most important species of tree.   For more information go to: www.facebook.com/events/202163857010683

The Guardian University Awards 2018 were launched last week and entries are welcome until the final deadline of Friday 23 February.

The Guardian are inviting entries from UK HE across 15 categories which will be shortlisted and judged by an expert panel. The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony in April. Corporate Communications will again be co-ordinating Kent’s award submissions this year.

This year’s Guardian University Award categories are listed below and, with only a couple of exceptions, any projects nominated must have started within the last 18 months.

1.Teaching excellence

2. Advancing staff equality

3. Student experience

4. Widening access and outreach

5. Retention, support and student outcomes

6. Course and curriculum design

7. Employability and entrepreneurship

8. Business collaboration

9. Social and community impact

10. Research impact (projects must have finished in the past 24 months)

11. Internationalisation

12. Digital innovation

13. Buildings that inspire (capital projects must have been completed within the last 24          months)

14. Sustainability project

15. Marketing and comms campaigns

You can find out more about the awards on the Guardian webpages.

Please do get in touch with Corporate Communications asap if you know of a project that we should be considering for this year’s awards – email us on communications@kent.ac.uk.

Colleagues are invited to attend Dr Mike Poltorak’s session on ‘Collaborative Learning through Documentary Reception and Production: Reflexivity and Embodiment in Visual Anthropology’.  Dr Poltorak is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology.

The session takes places on Wednesday 31 January, 12.55-14.00 in Darwin Seminar Room 8, Canterbury.

The integration of the content, and critical reflection of the production, of documentaries into teaching visual anthropology can enhance and transform students’ learning and their own video productions. Using three positions in relation to video production in the community of Angsbacka in Sweden Dr Poltorak will reflect on the relationship between sharing and embodiment and its’ value in teaching and suggest it offers an opportunity for transformative ‘peer teaching’ where students have the opportunity to engage with reflexivity, share insights, work collaboratively and then act with confidence and insight through making a video.

To book a place please email cpdbookings@kent.ac.uk