A University of Kent Crowdfunding Platform is being launched by the Development Office to support student projects at Kent.
First up are a group of enterprising students who are raising money to build an environmentally sustainable round wooden timber-framed building – using materials taken from the University’s own coppiced woodland.
This exciting project will create a teaching, learning, and social space set within an ethnobotanical garden. They need your help to prepare the site, assemble the circular structure, add the roof, and then design and construct the floor and walls.
You can follow their progress on Facebook or on Twitter @tree2_b
A half-day workshop on ‘New Findings on Scientific Productivity’ is being organised by the School of Economics on Wednesday 27 June.
The workshop aim is to promote an exchange of knowledge and ideas between academics and other stakeholders in the area of science, research and innovation.
The workshop will take place in Darwin Conference Suite, Canterbury campus, starting with lunch at 12.00 and ending with a conference dinner at The Goods Shed, Canterbury.
The workshop will include presentations on:
Impacts of academic conferences in scientific productivity
Research funding and academics’ behaviour
The role of gender on collaboration decisions
The trends of ageing in science
Incentives and academics’ productivity
For more information about the workshop, talks and presenting papers, click here.
On Friday 1 June, Kent Union and the University celebrated outstanding co-curricular student achievement at the 2018 Kent Student Awards Gala Dinner.
Over 250 students were nominated in 11 categories, with the entire shortlist being congratulated for going above and beyond in a number of activities and initiatives that benefit others.
Student of the Year
The overall ‘Student of the Year’ award, chosen from the category winners, was presented to joint winners Lily Dedman and Valiant Dorian.
Lily won for her amazing work as Kent Union’s Women’s Officer and for organising a wide range of events, including the ‘Reclaim the Night March’ and International Women’s Week.
Valiant won for being a dedicated Kent Union LGBT+ Trans Officer, from helping with the University’s new trans policy to organising a variety of LGBT+ events, notably ‘Fit for LGBT+ Trans Swimming’.
Group of the Year
The Kent Islamic Society was awarded the additional honour of being named ‘Group of the Year’ by judges. This is for their work celebrating and supporting the diverse cultures at the University, fundraising for international charities and celebrating multiculturalism at the Cultural Food Fair.
Highly commended students
The following students were highly commended across multiple categories:
Autosegmental phonology is an approach to phonology that allows the processing of sounds in language, such as tone and vowel harmony, to be independent of and extend beyond individual consonants and vowels.
Tamara will give an overview of the current autosegmental-metrical approaches to studying the intonation in the speaking of Russian, and present some original data that challenges some of the previous assumptions, and helps to advance our understanding of the structure of tonal representations (both in Russian and other languages).
The Department of Religious Studies is delighted to announce the launch of its new degree programme BA (Hons) in Global Philosophies, to begin in September 2018.
Global Philosophies provides an exciting, innovative opportunity to engage with intellectual thought from around the world. The programme offers a global approach to philosophical study with modules drawing not only on European or Western thought, but also on traditions originating in Asia, Africa and the Middle East from antiquity to the present day.
Professor Richard King, Head of the Department of Religious Studies, said of the programme: ‘The University of Kent is one of the few places in the country where students can study the wide variety of philosophical traditions that make up our global cultural heritage. This new degree provides an international focus for the study of intellectual thought around the world, both ancient and contemporary.’
In the latest podcast, Chris interviews Dr Paul March-Russell, Specialist Associate Lecturer in the Department of Comparative Literature. Paul talks about his earliest memories and how television played a role in shaping his identity, from Doctor Who and John Peel to Minipops. He discusses the pitfalls of ‘going back’ to one’s childhood home and about how he followed a path in academia – but that it wasn’t where he necessarily thought he would end up. He also reflects on the role of religion in shaping his values and goals.
To listen to the podcast, please see the page here.
The site is run by Dr Clifford Sosis, Lecturer in Philosophy at Coastal Carolina University in the US. The site aims to ‘dig deeper into the psychology of philosophers’, asking about their broader personal experiences and what their backgrounds bring to the discipline.
The interview with Simon explores his life, including growing up in the Black Country. He discusses such diverse topics as his Protestant work ethic, hymns, the Sinclair 48k, performing at the Oxford Review, and how his teaching and his personal life inform his research, amongst (many) other things.
The interview was posted today, 1 June 2018, here.
Philosophy Now aims to showcase the discipline as exciting, worthwhile and comprehensible. The magazine began in 1991 and is now the most widely read philosophy periodical in the English language.
Stamatina’s article is entitled ‘Our Duty to the Dead’ and enlists the help of philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) to discover why we have a duty to treat the dead with dignity.
‘For those of us who think that intuitions or widely held beliefs aren’t enough to explain why things should be done in a certain way, deeper reasons must be found,’ explains Stamatina in the article. ‘So let’s ask ourselves, why do we have the duty to treat the dead with dignity?’
