Dr Axel Stähler, Reader in the Department of Comparative Literature, has just been awarded a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship for a project entitled ‘Jerusalem Destroyed: Literature, Art, and Music in Nineteenth-Century Europe’.

The project proposes to interrogate representations of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70CE in relation to negotiations of Jewishness in nineteenth-century European cultural production. It encompasses primary material as diverse as drama and historical fiction, paintings, oratorios, operas, and libretti from Germany, Britain, and Italy. Each country produced a specific response to the subject which became manifest in distinctive narrative emphases and in preferences for different media and genres. Situating these developments in their respective cultural-historical, social, and political contexts, the project investigates the individual trajectories of the engagement with the destruction of Jerusalem against cross-cultural and transnational influences and similarities.

For more details about Leverhulme Research Fellowships, please see the page here.

Update from David Nightingale, Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost:

Further to my email yesterday, the GDPR information sessions for staff have proved to be very popular and so we have moved the Canterbury venues to Keynes Lecture Theatre 1. If you have tried to register and been told it’s fully booked, you should now be able to book using the links below.

Also, to clarify, all staff from all departments are welcome to attend any session. If you are part of a faculty, you may find it more helpful to attend one focused on your area as the questions in the Q&A portion of the session may be more pertinent to you. Should you be unable to attend, or should your team require bespoke information, please contact the Information Compliance team or the Development Office directly.

The sessions will include an overview of GDPR, what it means for Kent, and how we are preparing. There will also be an opportunity to ask questions. The Information Compliance team and the Development Office will use the sessions to determine the main points of concern for staff in order to develop resources and guidance which will subsequently be made available on the Information Compliance website.

A reminder of the sessions:

• Tuesday 17 April 10-11.00, Keynes Lecture Theatre 1 (Social Sciences) Register here.
• Friday 20 April 10-11.00, Keynes Lecture Theatre 1 (Humanities) Register here.
• Monday 23 April 10-11.00, Keynes Lecture Theatre 1 (Sciences) Register here.
• Thursday 26 April 10-11.00, Pilkington Building, Room 130 (All), Register here.
  NB change of venue

I hope you will find the sessions useful.

SLAS will be holding its annual postgrad writing retreat on 14 and 15 June at Brenley Farm Bunk Barn.

This is a residential event open to all postgrad students at Kent. It provides a structured and supportive environment for students to work on their dissertation or thesis.

Places on the retreat cost £20.00. This includes all food and accommodation. Register online. For further information please contact ljf@kent.ac.uk

The KentVision Programme invites you to one or more of our Open Forums – sign-up is open now so save a place while they’re still available!

As we prepare and transition to KentVision there is lots to share. With at least one event each month, we’ll cover enough ground that there is something of interest for everyone.

Always on a Wednesday afternoon from 14.00 to 17.00, dates, agendas and everything else you need to know is available here.

Broadly the same each month, at the Innovation Centre in Canterbury we’ll start with a welcome including refreshments and an opportunity to open discussions before attendees split roughly equally across two rooms. Two sessions run in parallel to offer a choice and if you just can’t choose, go to both! Each session is repeated for you to swap rooms and see everything there is on offer in a group size inviting of interaction.

At Medway, a more traditional event with presentations and demonstrations held in one room, still with a generous portion of time for networking, discussion and of course refreshments.

We hope you’re able to join us, but places are limited, so we ask you let us know you’re coming by signing up.

We look forward to seeing you at a Forum soon!

Don’t know much about the KentVision Programme yet? There’s lots of resources online to get a feel for the coming changes, understand what the Programme is doing and what that means for you. And you can always get in touch.

Want a better grasp of the wider changes related to the move to KentVision? Check out our Student Lifecycle Library, it starts with a number of overarching concepts to get to grips with, and will quickly grow to include much more information on Student Lifecycle Administration.

At the end of term, Professor Karen Cox wrote the following letter to Ruth Wilkinson, Kent Union President. The letter was in response to student queries on the subject of financial reimbursement following the recent period of strike action by members of the University and College Union. The letter is reproduced here in full.

Dear Ruth

As we reach the end of term, I wanted to let you know that we are continuing to gather information to assess the impact of the current period of industrial action on individual modules across the University. This information will allow us to develop a policy and effective mechanisms to support the consideration of any claim for compensation in a fair and equitable manner. Before we send any notification to individual students (who will have been differentially affected), we would value a discussion with you as to a suitable simple but fair approach that we might adopt to minimise any administration costs and avoid an unnecessarily legalistic approach.

We are also aware that there are a number of students who incurred expenditure, such as travel costs, to attend a lecture or seminar which was then cancelled as a result of the industrial action. In the coming weeks, we will be introducing a system to allow them to submit a claim to have this money reimbursed, aside from any wider compensation scheme. I will continue to update you on this.

Best wishes

Karen

Professor Karen Cox | Vice-Chancellor and President

A new website has been launched to outline our successful bid with Canterbury Christ Church University for funded places to establish a medical school.

Following the go-ahead from the Government and Health Education England on 20 March, the two universities are now developing the Kent and Medway medical school, the first medical school for the county of Kent.

The medical school will bring together the institutions’ existing centres of excellence in health and medical education with local healthcare organisations to offer a new model of patient-focused medical training.

To keep up-to-date with plans for the new school, see the new webpages.

We are pleased to be able to offer a number of sessions led by Psicon who are a local specialist in Psychology and Health Services.

Open to any member of staff who would like to increase their understanding of mental health awareness and managing personal resilience, the presentation-style sessions will provide a comprehensive blend of practical advice alongside an overview of underpinning theory and models to help participants gain a rounded understanding of managing mental health.

The sessions take place on:

• 4 May: 10.00-12.00 and 13.00-15.00 – Sibson SR6
• 10 May: 10.00-12.00 and 13.00-15.00 – Grimond Lecture Theatre
• 11 May: 10.00-12.00 and 13.00-15.00 – SLT2 Stacey Building
• 6 July: 10.00-12.00 and 13.00-15.00 – Keynes Seminar Room 16

To book a place and to obtain further information, please visit The Learning and Organisational Development Activities Calendar.