Bernardino Branca, a PhD student in the History and Philosophy of Art in the School of Arts, has published a major new intellectual biography of the philosopher and art historian Edgar Wind entitled Edgar Wind, filosofo delle immagini. La biografia intelletuale di un discepolo di Aby Warburg (Milan and Udine: Mimesis Edizioni, 2019).

Edgar Wind (1900-1971) was a German art historian who specialised on the survival of the ancient art of the Renaissance, and was and close collaborator of art historian Aby Warburg. In 1933, after the rise of Nazism in Germany, moved to London and became involved in the Warburg Institute and finally became Oxford University’s first Professor of Art History.

Based on extensive archival research, the volume is the first book-length study of Wind’s extraordinary life and significant contribution to scholarship, and makes an important contribution to our historical understanding of the Warburg tradition of art history.

Bernardino’s own PhD project is on ‘Edgar Wind, The Warburg Circle and the Renaissance’, under the supervision of Dr Ben Thomas and Dr Grant Pooke.

For further details, please see the publisher’s page (in Italian) here.

We are delighted to announce that SARD, a medical technology company based at the Innovation Centre, has chosen to support our fundraising for the Kent and Medway Medical School by choosing us as their Charity of the Year.  They have pledged to raise £5,000 through a programme of charity events such as bake sales, quizzes, challenge events and much more and we are very much looking forward to working with them.

SARD is a family run business which supplies workforce management software to the healthcare sector.  They are passionate about applying the best technologies to improve the way the healthcare workforce is managed and make life easier for those within it.

About their support for KMMS, they said:

“As a company founded alongside and working with doctors every day, we want to do everything we can to help strengthen the UK’s medical workforce. Kent and Medway Medical School will provide a new point of entry for future doctors and its focus on widening participation means that a career in medicine may become a possibility for many who would not have previously considered it. With one of our offices based at the University of Kent’s Innovation Centre, we are thrilled to have this development right on our doorstep and are excited about what this means for our children and children’s children, whether they be the doctors of the future, or those being cared for by them. We urge everybody to support this cause as every single person will need medical care at points in their life. The Kent and Medway Medical School will train future doctors who may end up saving the lives of you or your loved ones.”

They are kickstarting their fundraising efforts with a bake sale on Thursday 18th April from 10am in the Innovation Centre café area.

Kent alumna Amber Winston, who completed a BA (Hons) in Visual and Performed Arts at Kent in 2015 and an MA in History and Philosophy of Art in 2016, is currently Project and Marketing Executive for The Coffee Art Project, an art competition inviting artists to interpret the theme of coffee. As part her role, she selected Dr Grant Pooke, Senior Lecturer and Head of Art History, to be on the competition’s panel of judges.

The Coffee Art Project was featured at the London Coffee Festival, where 46 artist submissions were selected and displayed in a gallery. The Project is a non-profit initiative aimed at encouraging artists by providing them with an open platform to showcase their works.

Artists at all levels can enter one piece of artwork that connects to ‘coffee’ and/or ‘coffee shop’ experience. There is no restriction on media used; providing that they have a link to coffee. The project supports Project Waterfall, a charity committed to bringing clean water to communities which grow coffee. Project Waterfall has raised more than over £1 million and delivered clean water to over 37,000 people across 7 countries in partnership with WaterAid, Charity: Water and Water for People.

How did Amber come to be involved in The Coffee Project? ‘After graduation, I went on to a sales job for 20 months as a Business Development Executive, and took on another few roles throughout the business to gain some corporate experience’, she explains. ‘After this I took a big leap, took a big cut in pay, got myself a job in London as a marketing intern for a start-up company to experience in a more creative and autonomous role. After this ended I applied for a social media role at the Allegra Foundation, then – after seeing my work experience and past roles, plus my degrees – they asked me to take on the Coffee Art Project’.

Why did Amber choose Grant? ‘I had to select judges who would be able to fairly judge artwork based off four categories; Creativity, Impact, Connection to Coffee, and Spirit of Humanity. The reason I asked Grant to be on the panel was because he taught me since I started at Kent – I admire his vast depth of knowledge and how he made me try harder at each piece of written work on his subjects even though I struggled with dyslexia. I remembered he taught a class on globalisation (which is part of coffee culture) and thought that he would judge each piece with the same amount of composure he has for all his previous students’ work’.

To see all Coffee Art Project entries, please click here.

A group of Masters students from the School of Computing attended Athena Hack, an all-women hackathon, in London from 13-14 April 2019.

The hackathon was organised by ShowCode as an initiative to champion female technologists and focus their skills to help solve one of the biggest environmental issues around. Prizes were awarded for the best performing university team and the best performing company team with a top prize of £5000 cash.

The challenge was to use their skills to create an idea that would help solve the plastic crisis that is currently plaguing the world in support of Plastic Oceans UK. The team, called ‘bumblebees’, was made up of five Masters students; Asha Barathoki, Sybil Mayard, Mai Pham, Zhaneta Georgieva and Clarissa Ang.

The team developed an app, called ‘Plastix’, based on the augmented reality, machine learning and image recognition features which have become popular among smart phone users. It aims to use real-time object identification, personal record and data aggregation to address the lack of awareness and lack of data, as well as making it convenient for the user.

Plastix has three basic functions:

• -identifying an object in real time and whether it is recyclable
• reporting and booking rubbish hotspots
• allowing the user to receive rewards for recycling / cleaning the hotspot.

Asha Barathoki said ‘We had an amazing experience at the hackathon where we got to network and develop our skills via workshops. Unfortunately we didn’t win but the whole process was very inspiring for female students like us in the tech industry.’

Our Organising for Success webpages are being updated regularly.

Click on the webpages to find out the latest news and information, including new Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on:

• Timing of the Kent Voluntary Severance Scheme
• Engagement and consultation periods
• Equality Impact Assessments

Calling all early career research staff at Kent!  You told us that “Research staff fall through the cracks”.  Help us stop this from happening in the future.  Have your say in the Careers in Research Online Survey (CROS) from 1 May 2019.

CROS runs nationally every two years for early career research staff. CROS is your chance to tell Kent about your views and experiences. Key benefits of CROS are:

• The information you provide will be used to inform policy and practice around employment, management and researcher development: this should benefit not only you, but also have long-lasting impact for future researchers.
• A clearer picture of Kent’s progress towards implementing the principles of the Concordat to support Researchers; and on how we are meeting our Athena Swan goals, to continue to improve our gender equality support for early career research staff.
• A good response rate and national benchmarking will provide leverage for future changes at Kent.

CROS is anonymous. It is managed by Vitae and hosted on Online Surveys, a secure web environment.

Is the survey targeted at you? Vitae’s definition of early career research staff is:

“Researchers are […] individuals whose primary responsibility is to conduct research and who are employed for this purpose. It is recognised that this broad category of staffing covers a wide range of staff with different disciplinary backgrounds, levels of training, experience and responsibility, types of contract (fixed or open-ended, full- or part-time), and different career expectations and intentions.  However, […] there are likely to be early career staff who may be sustaining their research activity through a series of teaching or other professional contracts.” (2015)

If you have any queries about the survey, contact Dr Jo Collins (Postgraduate Development Advisor), j.p.collins@kent.ac.uk.

CROS closes on 31 May.2019.