International Partnerships will be hosting the following event during Go Abroad Fortnight:

‘Mobility Beyond Medway’ – Erasmus Opportunities
Tuesday 23 October, 14.00 – 15.00 – M1-22, Medway
Learn about the opportunities to undertake staff training at our partner universities across Europe.

For more information, please visit our website.

We look forward to seeing you there!

As you may know, the Programme Approval and Curriculum Design project (formerly part of the Simplifying Kent programme of projects) has been running for the last two years, reviewing current practice and a range of proposals and options relating to the ways in which programmes and modules are approved and reviewed, the structure within which the University’s taught programmes operate, and other areas related to curriculum design.

The project is reaching the end of its current phase, and we would like to take this opportunity to thank all colleagues who have had input into the project, either as members of the Stakeholder Group, or through the meetings, consultation sessions, and focus groups we have held throughout the last two years. We have greatly valued everyone’s contributions and have made many changes in response to people’s feedback and ideas. The University has lots to be proud of, but we also face some problematic issues and it has been good to see so many people engaged in trying to solve them.

We have prepared a final recommendations report, detailing the work we have done, options we have considered, and the recommendations the project team is making to Senate. We would welcome your thoughts and comments on this report before we present it in November.

All members of staff are invited to access the executive summary of our report, and the full report itself, via the project’s Sharepoint site.

All thoughts and comments will be gratefully received via email at skone@kent.ac.uk and/or at one of the consultation sessions we have planned to be held in the latter half of this month. If you would find it useful for Jon to come out to meet with you and/or your team to discuss any of the recommendations in more detail, please get in touch via skone@kent.ac.uk

We will be holding consultation sessions open to any and all interested colleagues at the Canterbury and Medway campuses on the following dates and times:

Canterbury

• 11.00-13.00, Friday 19 October – Cornwallis East Seminar Room 1
• 14.00-16.00, Friday 19 October – Cornwallis East Seminar Room 1
• 12.00-14.00, Monday 22 October – Cornwallis North West Seminar Room 7

Medway

• 11.00-13.00, Thursday 25 October – PK127, Pilkington Building

Jon Beer – Project Manager and Simon Kirchin – Project Lead

Scholars from across faculties at Kent are welcome to attend a two-day interdisciplinary workshop exploring Roman Law across the ages.

‘Recollecting Roman Law: Ancient perspectives on the contemporary’ is the first event of the year for the Kent Centre for Critical Thought (CCT) and its affiliated Law and History Research Group, Clio.

The workshop has been organised by Kent Law School Professor Maria Drakopoulou and Professor Alain Pottage (London School of Economics).

Professor Drakopoulou, Co-Director of CCT, said: ‘The theme of the workshop is the exploration of Roman Law with reference to contemporary legal studies. We take “Roman Law” to refer, not only to classical Roman Law, but to its various “incarnations” during medieval and early modern times.’

Together with Professor Drakopoulou and Professor Pottage, participants include:

Dr Jose Bellido (Kent Law School)

Julia Chryssostalis (University of Westminster)

Professor Peter Goodrich (Cardozo Law School)

Professor Martti Koskeniemmi (University of Helsinki)

Marta Madero (Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento and L’Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales)

Dr Edward Mussawir (Griffith Law School)

Professor Paolo Napoli (L’Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales)

Dr Connal Parsley (Kent Law School)

The workshop programme, hosted in Darwin Board Room (Darwin College), comprises:

Friday 19 October

15.00 – 17.00

• ‘In vitam humanum: Comedy, Office, Law’ (Peter Goodrich)
• ‘Several bees or a full swarm? The case thinks the law’ (Ed Mussawir)

17.30 – 19.30

• ‘The influence of Roman law on theology: the case of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus (end 1st century AD)’ (Paolo Napoli)
• ‘The hermaphrodite’ (Marta Madero)

Saturday 20 October

09.30 – 11.30

• ‘Jus gentium. The power of a middle concept’ (Martti Koskenniemi)
• ‘Mauss and the anthropology of nexum‘ (Alain Pottage)

12.00 – 14.00

• ‘Nature, Bodies, Blood and the question of personhood in Roman law’ (Maria Drakopoulou)
• Panel discussion

The Centre for English and World Languages (CEWL) is offering Individual Writing Tutorials to give you the opportunity to discuss your academic writing with a member of staff from CEWL. Advice will be given on the structure, coherence and cohesion of your work. Individual sessions last 30 minutes each and are free of charge.

Tutorials are available all year. To make an appointment, please email us at cewl@kent.ac.uk.

We have recently heard about a WeChat scam aimed at Chinese students, where the caller claimed to be from the Chinese Embassy and asked for bank details. You should never give a caller your bank details. Please read this warning from UKCISA about this particular scam.

If you receive an unexpected email, phone call or letter from someone claiming to be from the Home Office, be careful, as it may be a scam. The Home Office has issued new guidance on how to protect yourself from tricks and scams.

Some students have been tricked into paying large sums of money to fraudsters. If you think you might have been contacted by a fraudster, please contact Kent Union Advice Centre.

Dr Oliver Double, Reader in Drama in the School of Arts and Director of the Centre for Popular and Comic Performance, featured on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row last week, to attempt to answer why is the unfortunate mishap hilarious – so long as someone else is falling off the ladder?

Front Row is a magazine programme discussing the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music.

‘One of the oldest theories of why we laugh is that we laugh at the expense of somebody else,’ explains Olly, who features 2 minutes into the programme, ‘we can trace this back to Aristotle, who said “comedy is an imitation of men worse than average”. But that’s not really an adequate explanation, in the sense you do laugh at Laurel and Hardy falling over but at the same time they also inspire great affection.”

Olly was interviewed alongside Jonathan Sayer of Mischief Theatre, and stand-up comedienne Natalie Haynes.

The programme may be heard on the BBC’s website.

As part of its commitment to Employability and Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity, the School of Engineering and Digital Arts is delighted to announce that on Wednesday 17 October at 13.00 in Jennison Lecture Theatre, it will be welcoming Dawn Bonfield, MBE to the University of Kent for an inspirational lecture on Inclusive Engineering and Technology.

Inclusion in Engineering and Technology is a competence that allows engineers and technologists to ensure that their work is inclusive of and accessible to everybody.  It is a methodology to ensure that products and services have been designed with 360 degree visibility, and that the needs and requirements of all users – both now and in the future – have been considered. It takes into account traditionally under-represented groups, ensuring that data sets which have been used to inform design are complete and non-biased, and that these groups are represented in the design process, as well as considering the manufacturers, maintainers and users of the finished product or service.

Dawn Bonfield is a Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor of Inclusive Engineering at Aston University, and Founder & Director of Towards Vision, a Company which aims to work towards a vision of diversity and inclusion in engineering. She is Past President and former Chief Executive of the Women’s Engineering Society (WES), and in 2018 is an Ambassador for the Year of Engineering.

To book your ticket for this event, please book via Eventrbite or alternatively, just turn up. All welcome.