Dr Gloria Chamorro, Lecturer in Applied Linguistics in the Department of English Language & Linguistics, has recently been awarded a grant by the Amity Fund (in association with Kent Community Foundation) for her English Hub for Refugees project.

The project started in September 2016 and it involves undergraduate and postgraduate students at the University teaching English to young refugees for two hours every week. The refugees, who are between 16 and 18 years old, come from a range of backgrounds, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea, Syria and Sudan, and they have recently arrived in the country unaccompanied by adults. Many of them have had limited or no access to education because of conflict or because of the community they come from.

Dr Chamorro said: “I am very grateful to the Amity Fund and Kent Community Foundation for the award of this grant which will allow us to continue the important provision of free English classes for young refugees taught by our University students and will also enable the with the continued creation of language learning materials.”

Researchers in the School of Psychology are looking for participants aged between 25 and 40 or 65 and 80 years old to take part in our exciting research testing whether ‘brain training’ really works. This project is led by Prof Heather Ferguson, and is funded by a large European Research Council grant.

The research team uses a range of questionnaires and computer tasks to find out whether cognitive and social skills can be enhanced through training, and how these training effects might change at different ages.

As a thank-you, participants receive £50 cash, a small gift, and be reimbursed for reasonable travel expenses!

To find out more please email us at braintraining@kent.ac.uk

There will be a writing retreat for HEA Fellowship/Senior Fellowship on Wednesday 1 May at Medway campus, from 9.30-15.30.

The retreat is for all staff at Canterbury Christ Church, Kent and Greenwich Universities who are in the process of putting together a claim for their Fellowship or Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (now Advance HE).

Places on the retreat are limited, so do book your place before 20 April 2019.

If you wish to cancel your booking, please contact LTE-ADMIN@canterbury.ac.uk

The retreat is an opportunity for you to have protected time away from your ‘day job’ to focus on making progress with your application to become HEA Fellow or Senior Fellow. You will receive guidance and support from assessors of HEA claims, and share your ideas with others in a similar position. This will give you a chance to further your critical reflection on your professional practice, and transform your ideas into more structured notes and even start writing sections of your claim.

If you are interested in HEA Fellowship, please contact recognition@kent.ac.uk

Keynes College is pleased to welcome the ‘Staying Out’ exhibition that has been installed in the Keynes Gallery (above Dolche Vita). Curated from the LGBTQ archive at the Bishop’s Gate Institute, this exhibition vividly depicts the LGBTQ struggle over multiple decades, around the concepts of “Coming out”, “Protests”, “Pride” and “Equality”. 

For further information on exhibitions in Keynes College visit our events page.

Access the full LGBT+ History Month 2019 programme here.

Keynes College is delighted to continue its 50th anniversary celebrations by hosting a new photographic exhibition in the Atrium and the Teaching Foyer.

“Outside Time” shows intriguing black and white photographs by Josef Guinzbourg- Husson, Claude Philippot and Jean- Michel Husson, three artist who have exhibited extensively across Europe. We are particularly pleased to host them at Kent as it is the first time their work has been shown in the UK.

For further information on exhibitions in Keynes College please visit our website and click on the Keynes tab.

Have you signed up for a FREE Study Plus workshop yet?

KE051 ‘Writing and Directing Feature Length Fiction for Cinema: “The Selfish Giant”, a case study’ is an interactive workshop, which will give you an introduction to writing and directing a film from initial idea through to completion and exhibition.

If you’re thinking of signing up for a language as a wild module, or just want to have a go at learning a new language, choose from four taster sessions, all suitable for complete beginners:

Arabic Taster session- (KE181)

Japanese Taster session (KE182)

Mandarin Taster session (KE183)

Russian Taster session (KE184)

You’ll also find a range of woodland craft workshops, such as Coppicing, and Brash Fence Building (KE060, KE061, KE072, KE160, KE161)

Don’t miss out: Book your place via the Workshops page in SDS.

For more information and to see all of the courses on offer, please visit the Study Plus website.

This short two-weekend CPD course for multi-professional healthcare workers will commence with consideration of a key question “what is the difference between evaluation and research” by way of an introduction to evaluative approaches in health services and how evaluation can take into account the complexity of health services.

Dates and time:

Friday 15 – Saturday 16 March 2019, 9.00-17.00 and
Friday 17 – Saturday 18 May 2019, 9.00-17.00.

Convenor – Professor Patricia Wilson

The course will take into consideration the contexts and potential areas of conflict when conducting evaluation in health care settings through a session on the politics of evaluation, this will be followed by topics on different approaches to evaluation within implementation science and putting evaluation to practice.

On successful completion of the course, you will be able to:

• Demonstrate knowledge of the differences between different evaluative approaches
• Competently choose between the different evaluation approaches in an informed way
• Apply an understanding of a variety of approaches to evaluate professionally relevant – interventions and to ascertain impact of professionally based interventions.

Attendance and Venue:

You will be required to attend the course at our Medway campus on the above dates. Venue: University of Kent Medway Building, Chatham Maritime, Medway, ME4 4AG.   Certificates of attendance will be issued to those who successfully complete the course.

The course is delivered by the University of Kent’s Centre for Professional Practice (CPP). CPP offers part-time, flexible work-related Postgraduate and Undergraduate programmes. Our flexible, part-time MA/MSc in Professional Practice programme and short courses have been specifically designed to meet the needs of working professionals who wish develop their expertise within their current workplace.

The fee for this short CPD course is £450. Find out more on the CPP Facebook 

To book a place follow the CPP link

The next Drill Hall Dialogue talk, ‘An Introduction to the Guildhall Museum’, will be given by Dr Jeremy Clarke, on Tuesday 12 February from 10.00.

Dr Clarke is responsible for all formal education and learning programmes supported by the museum collection or its listed buildings. He mostly works with and in local schools, but also runs courses, lectures and illustrated talks for adults. He has also run partnership projects to support children in making music for Dickens novels, in illustrating scenes from Great Expectations, and in working with actors at locations made famous by the novel.

Drill Hall Dialogues is a monthly series of talks held at the Drill Hall Library, the learning resource centre for the Universities at Medway collaborative project. The talks take place on the first or second Tuesday of the month and usually last no longer than 45 minutes with 15 minutes allotted for any questions and answers.

The talk on 12 February takes place in Room DA002 and all staff are welcome to attend.

For more information on the Guildhall Museum, see the Visit Medway site.