Monthly Archives: June 2018

Ian Grigg-Spall

Condolences for Ian Grigg-Spall

Former colleagues in the Law School and the wider University were saddened to learn of the death of Ian Grigg-Spall on Saturday 16 June 2018, one day short of his 75th birthday.

Ian was one of the first lecturers in law at the University, joining what was then the Board of Studies in Law in 1969. He was a mainstay and influential member of what became the Law School, until his eventual retirement in 2007. In that time he played a major role in the development of the distinctive critical orientation of the Law School at Kent, especially in relation to Marxist approaches to law. He also developed radically new approaches to teaching and research in Company Law, working closely with Professor Paddy Ireland, with whom he also edited the Critical Lawyers Handbook.

Ian was brought up in pre-independence Kenya, graduated with degrees from Cambridge and Harvard, where he was a Fulbright Scholar, and qualified as a solicitor with a city firm before joining Kent. He made frequent trips to Africa throughout his life, including a spell as a visiting academic at the University of Dar es Salaam. In later years at the Law School he focussed on promoting recruitment and very successfully expanded the School’s number of overseas students. This took him on many international trips to Africa and further afield, where he became a well-known figure on the international university recruitment circuit.

Ian had an intensely political sense of the role of law and legal education, and is remembered by students as an inspiring and engaging teacher. He was instrumental in founding and steering the Critical Lawyers Group at Kent for students, which eventually became a national organisation holding regular conferences with major figures from the legal profession and academia. He was deeply committed to the transformative power of legal education and was one of a group of colleagues who shaped the Law School in a way which enabled it to become arguably the leading critical law school in the country.

John Wightman, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences

The funeral will be at Barham at 11.20 on Wednesday 4 July, followed by a wake at Boughton Golf Club.

BLOCK

BLOCK circus and dance extravaganza – 20 and 22 June

On Wednesday 20 June (Medway) and Friday 22 June (Canterbury), join us for breathtaking performances to launch the Kent Festival of Dangerous Ideas.

Leading UK companies NoFit State Circus and Motionhouse bring together their unique styles in BLOCK, a powerful fusion of dance and circus that pushes the limits of both art forms. With its daring physicality, split-second timing and thrilling feats, BLOCK leaves audiences gasping.Twenty oversized blocks, fashioned to resemble giant concrete Jenga blocks, are deconstructed and reformed into an infinite variety of shapes for the performers to play on, move with and explore. BLOCK is about life in the city; its contradictions and challenges.

You may remember Motionhouse as the company who brought the dancing diggers to bOing! in 2015. They combine circus and dance to create spectacular, physical performances that have wowed crowds across the world. We are delighted to have them back at the University once again.

The performance times are:

Medway

  • 12.15 (at staff BBQ)

Canterbury

  • 13.30 (as part of the staff BBQ)
  • 16.30 (open to all staff and public)

Everyone is welcome, and the 16.30 performance is open to all family and friends as well – so please spread the word. https://thegulbenkian.co.uk/event/block/

SMFA’s Dr Blanca Regina, Associate Lecturer in Event and Experience Design, performing in London on Friday 22 June at Iklectik

On Friday 22 June, as part of the ‘Unpredictable Series’  SMFA’s Dr Blanca Regina, Associate Lecturer in Event and Experience Design performs in an evening of audiovisual concerts at IKLECTIK in London, with internationally acclaimed artists Sculpture, Zan Lyons, and Noriko Okaku with special guest Steve Beresford.

Blanca Regina is an artist, curator, and tutor based in London who is currently involved in creating audiovisual performances, sound works, installations, and film. She has performed with numerous artists, including Leafcutter John, Steve Beresford, David Toop and Matthias Kispert, and curated a number of events and installations internationally.

A visiting research fellow at University of the Arts London, her research and practice encompass expanded cinema, free improvisation, moving image, photography and audiovisual performance.  In 2010, she received a doctorate in Humanities from University Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, with the thesis The VJ and audiovisual performance: towards a radical aesthetic of postmodernism.

She is curator at the London-based Music Hackspace, Live Cinema Foundation and Strange Umbrellas. With Matthias Kispert she founded the Material Studies Group, developing a series of workshops and performances around the production of sound with everyday objects.

Get tickets for the event – £8 advance or £10 on the door.

Doors open at 19.00 for 20.00 start.

Work by SMFA Fine Art alumna Nadia Perrotta selected by UNESCO for Human Rights

A moving image installation about art and children called Because I am, written and directed by SMFA alumni Nadia Perrotta (BA, 2015, and MA Fine Art, 2017) and featuring Lalita Bailey, (BA Fine Art 2017) and the children of Squirrel Lodge and The Rabbit on the Moon nurseries, has been selected for a major UNESCO event in Italy about art and education.

Presented by Associazione Internazionale Arti Plastiche Italia, Spazio-Tempo Arte and Fondazione Opera Campana dei Caduti, Human Rights? #EDU 2018 is an International Exhibition of Contemporary Art from 23 June – 23 September at the Fondazione Opera Campana dei Caduti, Rovereto, Trento, Italy which features 161 artists from 37 countries defending the human right to education.

The event asks the artists to represent and tell, with their own artistic language, a personal vision of the problem of the right to education representing a story, a concept, a complaint, or showing a future perspective as message of hope or as a concrete proposal on the opportunities to be pursued to achieve this fundamental goal for the construction of a fair and right society.

More about the event here.
See Nadia’s film here.

Nadia’s film Because I Am was created during her artist residency since September 2016, at The Rabbit on The Moon Nursery in Sittingbourne, and there will be an exhibition – Because I am: A children’s journey across self recognition and discovery of the world around them through the arts  – on Saturday 23rd June, 12.00-15.00 at Kemsley Community Centre, The Square, Ridham Ave, Kemsley, Sittingbourne showing the works the children created with her throughout the past year.

EqualiTeas

It’s 100 years since Parliament passed the Representation of the People Act 1918 which allowed the first women, and all men, to vote. The UK Parliament is celebrating this and other milestones in the UK’s democratic history and we want to be part of the festivities! Therefore it is time to arrange a tea party; EqualiTeas here at the University of Kent.

We want to invite you to debate and celebrate our equal right to vote. Just pop in for a cuppa and a chat with your colleagues across the campus!

Tuesday 26 June at Gulbenkian (15.00-17.00) Canterbury Campus

Thursday 28 June at Bistro No1 (15.00-17.00) Medway Campus

(Visit the Vote 100 pages to discover more).

If you have any questions please email: athenaswan@kent.ac.uk

Staff in Registry 4

Project management training 23-24 July

Learning and Organisational Development will be running a two-day Project Management training course on 23 and 24 July.

Objectives and learning outcomes are as follows:

  • understand the need for a consistent approach to project management within the University
  • use the underlying principles contained within the University of Kent project management framework on all future projects
  • work with a colleague post course to develop your personal action plan
  • communicate the new project management approach to colleagues and partners within the University

Please make a booking via the Learning and Development activities calendar.

Challenges of Religious Urbanization in Africa workshop

The Challenges of Religious Urbanization in Africa

The ‘Challenges of Religious Urbanization in Africa’ workshop, funded by the British Academy/Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) through the Religious Urbanization in Africa (RUA) project, will be held on 26 June 2018. It is hosted by the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Lagos, in collaboration with the University of Kent.

The aim of the workshop is to gather a unique set of speakers to discuss current and urgent issues relating to intersections between infrastructure and the expansion of religious organisations in African cities. The key questions to be considered are

  • Do religious infrastructures ameliorate or exacerbate everyday challenges of safety, inclusion, and security?
  • How should development policies and analyses take account of religious dynamics and religious actors in urban African contexts?

Amongst the speakers is Dr David Garbin, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, who is Principal Investigator on the Rua Project.

The workshop programme is available on the Rua website.

 

Beach book

Using the Templeman Library this vacation

24/7 opening will end at 23:00 on Friday 15 June. From Saturday 16 June, the library will be open 08:00 – 23:00 daily (closed Bank Holiday Monday 27 August).

Service desks:

  • Monday – Friday 09.00 – 18.00
  • Saturday 12.00 – 18.00
  • Sunday closed

Some spaces are changing…

  • The Chill Out Zone will close at 21.00 on Friday 15 June
  • Pop-up study space in D Block will close at 23.00 on Friday 15 June
  • A Block seminar rooms on the ground floor will be open as study space over the summer from Monday 25 June  – check the screen outside each room for availability
  • A Block, Ground will be closed for work on the flooring between Saturday 16 and Sunday 24 June.

Studying across campus

Study Hubs are open throughout the summer apart from the Senate Study Hub which will close at 21.00 for the Summer vacation. Use our map to find your nearest Study Hub.

We are pleased to say Senate will be reopening later in the year as a dedicated Postgraduate Study Hub.

Don’t miss a beat

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram if you want to be the first to know about:

  • changes to study spaces (including the new PG study hub!)
  • Library and IT services
  • available resources
  • the return of the Chill Out Zone
  • lib memes
Medway campus

Curriculum Internationalisation Development session – Medway Campus, 29 June 

A session has been arranged to take place in Medway on Friday 29 June, 11.00-12.30pm in the Medway Building M1-22.

Dr Anthony Manning is pleased to be working in collaboration with Dr Silvia Colaiacomo at UELT on the Curriculum Internationalisation Development Sessions (CIDS) focusing on mechanisms to develop and enhance curriculum internationalisation within modules and co-curricular educational activities.

The CIDS are designed to respond to an objective which features in both Kent’s Institutional Plan and our Internationalisation Strategy.

For further details including session outline please see: https://www.kent.ac.uk/teaching/networks/ltn/index.html#062018CIDS

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