The 2019 People and Planet University League published on Tuesday, saw the University of Kent establish itself in the top 40 of sustainable HE institutions, up a whopping 61 places from 101^st last year.

The table compiled by student-led network People and Planet scores Universities out of 100 on criteria such as environmental audits and management systems, carbon management, sustainable food, student and staff engagement, and sustainability in teaching.

Building upon the Vice-Chancellor’s commitment to embedding sustainability across the organisation, staff and students have been working with the Sustainability Team on a huge range of projects and initiatives representing action against one or more of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Much of the improvement in the league table over the last year can be attributed to initiatives across 3 key areas:

Sustainable Food – The Sustainable Food Steering group developed and published the University’s first Sustainable Food Strategy in 2018. The strategy is a road map for increasing the sustainability of our food offering from field to fork and beyond, and was co-written by Kent Hospitality, Kent Sport, The Gulbenkian and the Estates Department, along with student and staff representatives.

Education for Sustainable Development – Work to promote the importance of embedding sustainability across the curriculum has been ongoing throughout the year. In March 2019, the Teaching Sustainability: Sustainable Teaching event, bought students and staff together to find out how this is approached at other Universities and to discuss how this could best be achieved at Kent. Next year the University will be running the NUS Responsible Futures programme which is a whole-institution approach to embedding social responsibility and sustainable across the formal and informal curriculum.

Student and Staff Engagement – 2018/19 has seen the first full year of the innovative FutureProof programme, which helps staff and students to deliver a University of the future by challenging departments and individuals to review their impacts against the Sustainable Development Goals. Futureproof represents an innovative approach to engagement at Kent as students and staff, especially within academic schools, are encouraged to work together to identify areas to focus efforts and plan projects and initiatives.

For more information about Sustainability at Kent, download our annual report and for details of how to get involved please visit the Sustainability Webpages or contact Catherine or Emily at sustainability@kent.ac.uk.

The Student Union shop on the Plaza will close at 14.00 Sunday 21 July for stock take.

The Park Wood shop will still be closed for refurbishment at this time, so this means that there will be no stores open from 14.00 21 July – 7.00 22nd July when the SU shop on the Plaza will be open again.

We apologise for any inconvenience.

Dr Kaitlyn Regehr, Lecturer in the Department of Media Studies, has featured in a BBC3 documentary entitled ‘Inside the Secret World of Incels’, which debuted on Saturday 14 July 2019.

The documentary explores the online subculture of ‘incels’ (the word being a portmanteau of ‘involuntary celibate’) who promote hatred, misogyny and racism, and have been linked to hate crimes and mass murders. To produce the documentary, director Simon Rawles gained unprecedented access to incel community members. The resulting documentary explores the how online ideology can push people into extreme behaviour and considers the reasons why this may occur, including mental health issues and trauma.

‘The police should be looking at this in the same way they look at religious extremism online’, explains Kaitlyn in the documentary. ‘I’ve been researching online misogyny for the past five years… I’ve really been looking at the potential for violence to spill off screens and on to streets.’

The documentary features a seminar delivered by Kaitlyn, where Kent Media Studies students discuss the impact of online hate speech.

The documentary contains strong language and some disturbing scenes. It is currently available on the BBC’s iPlayer here.

Watch the trailer here:

Dr Cecilia Sayad, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Film, has just been interviewed for the BBC Bitesize site regarding her expertise on the horror genre.

Bitesize is the BBC’s online support service for students studying GCSE level and equivalents.

The article explores how the film Midsommar (2019) fits into the wider history of horror films, what makes them scary, and how the genre has changed.

‘Having taught horror for many years, I see students have very different reactions to some classics: some find The Exorcist, for example, still very scary. The same applies to Rosemary’s Baby, which for some is still a disturbing horror film.’ However, reactions to certain films have changed, even if the story remains relevant: ‘it would be hard to find someone being too freaked out by James Whale’s Frankenstein, from 1931, but this has more to do with the film’s pace than its theme – which has never been more relevant, now that AI is a much bigger part of our lives.’

To read the article, please see the page here.

The Universities at Medway fifth annual festival of learning, teaching and assessment, entitled ‘Developing a culture of student engagement’, will take place on Thursday 12 September at the Medway Campus, Pilkington Building Room 008 from 09.30-14.30. The Festival is free to attend but you must book your place before 6 September by completing the online booking form.

Our keynote speaker will be Professor Colin Bryson.  His talk will be complemented by 17 presentations from colleagues from all three universities.  The programme and details of parallel sessions is available on the festival webpage.

This year’s theme is on student engagement.  It is a consistently strong theme that runs through the sector and is a priority for all three universities and their partner colleges.

The Annual Medway Festival aims to promote, share and celebrate our collective practices across all three universities and their partner colleges based at Medway to benefit all students studying at Medway.  Although our primary focus is the development of the Medway Campus, staff from Canterbury are most welcome to attend.

Over the next few months the way you print at Canterbury, Medway and Tonbridge will change.

Our Executive Group has approved a new Print, Copy, and Scan Policy (pdf) which will be rolled out across the University. The new policy was agreed in October last year and is vital to our reduction of both the costs and environmental impact of printing, as well as the procurement and maintenance costs of the equipment.

We’ll replace desktop printers with multi-functional devices (MFDs) that have combined print, scan and copy functionality. There will be fewer printers overall. The likely date of the first change will be 12 August 2019. Where it is necessary, desktop printers will be kept by exception.

We’re finalising locations with help from your school/department. Your departmental IT representative (excel file) should shortly be able to share the finalised printer map for your building with you. If you’re concerned that your needs may not be met, please discuss with your departmental IT representative.

We’ll let you know when your offices will switch to the new service and provide advice for using the new printers.

How printing will work

Why this is happening
We have over 850 desktop printers on campus – some of which only print a handful of pages a month. Desktop printers are expensive to maintain and operate, and are energy inefficient.

This change will enable us to:

• reduce costs considerably
• reduce energy usage by 55,000kgs of carbon a year
• reduce paper usage by around 15% – 3 million sheets of paper a year.

Our existing print provider, Apogee, will provide the service and dispose of excess printers in an environmentally-conscious and safe way.

Mark Reed, Head of Procurement

In the latest episode of the Nostalgia podcast series, Dr Chris Deacy, Reader in Theology and Religious Studies in the Department of Religious Studies, speaks to Professor Gerard Loughlin from the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Durham.

In this episode, we find out about Gerard’s earliest memory and his family background, and Gerard reflects on how many of his close friends went to university and the teachers who influenced him. The pair also discuss what it was like to be a student at Lampeter in the late 1970s; theology and film; cockroaches; writing long essays; making, as well as watching, films as a child; the grammar of film-making; watching films in Lampeter’s Arts Hall; student politics; CathSoc; John Hick and religious pluralism; keeping a diary; and whether Gerard is a looking back or a looking forward type of person.

Professor Catherine Richardson has been appointed as the academic Co-Director for our Institute for Cultural and Creative Industries.

Catherine brings a wealth of experience to the role, including past experience of the cultural and creative industries and her work as Associate Dean (Research and Innovation) for the Faculty of Humanities.

Catherine said: ‘I’m really excited to be taking on this new challenge, working with colleagues across the University and beyond to develop a clear and very distinctive vision for our research and education in the cultural and creative industries, and helping to ensure that our creativity spreads more broadly, right across the University, into every part of what we do at Kent.’

She will start in the role this summer, working with our other Co-Director, Liz Moran. Plans will be formed through Autumn 2019 with more announcements made in due course. We anticipate that the Institute will be a major catalyst for Kent as we build to our 60th anniversary in 2025, with work in education, research and innovation.

Professor Simon Kirchin | Dean of Humanities