Monthly Archives: February 2020

Codebar Skills Development sessions available

What is codebar?

codebar is an opportunity to network, socialise and do some coding. The workshops are volunteer led and consist of 30 minutes of socialising with food and drink, followed by a lightning talk, then coding.

codebar encourage new participants to work on their HTML/CSS, JavaScript, Ruby, Python or Git tutorials. They also help them understand programming concepts.

About the workshops

codebar participants are paired with a coach and can either go through the online courses available via the codebar.io site, or get assistance with their own projects.

The workshops are free to attend and led by Yoyo Design, and form part of the County wide Kent codebar chapter.

Coaches

codebar are always on the lookout for more developers to join their community and help coach at their workshops. If you are interested in being a coach then please visit here.

Participants (Codebar Students)

codebar participants (codebar Students) come from a variety of backgrounds. Some want to become full-time developers, whereas some would like to learn the basics of coding in a supportive environment.

The details:

We have two sessions coming up, one on the 24^th February the other on the 30^th March.

They run from 6.30-9 in Sibson seminar room 6.

Please register before attending.

The February session is worth 15 Employability Points.

To find out more and to register visit the Hub for innovation website.

Postgraduate Open Event – 22 February

Our next postgraduate event takes place on Saturday 22 February 2020, from10am-2pm, on Canterbury campus.

It’s a chance to meet and talk to specialist academics and admissions staff about postgraduate study at our campuses in the UK and specialist centres in Tonbridge and across Europe.

You can also talk to staff from the Graduate School and get the latest information on funding, including loans for Master’s and PhD students.

Find out more on our Visit Kent webpages.

Kent Sport student and staff membership sale

This Valentine’s, we want you to treat yourself. That’s why we’re offering students and staff an exclusive 20% off sale where you could save up to £59. So if you’re not already a member of Kent Sport, this is a great opportunity to join us.

You can even purchase for that special someone; you simply need their student or staff ID number, found on their Kent One card. The 20% membership discount is available from Monday 10 to Sunday 16 February inclusive. You can view the benefits of membership on the Kent Sport webpages.

Students – prices and how to join:

-Premium Plus £141.60 (was £177)
-Premium £112 (was £140)
-Plus £103.20 (was £129)

Memberships are valid until 31 August 2020. Purchase membership online or at the Sports Centre and The Pavilion receptions.

Staff – prices and how to join:

-Premium Plus £236.80 (was £296)
-Premium £204 (was £255)
-Plus £168 (was £210)

Memberships are valid for one year from purchase date. Purchase at the Sports Centre and The Pavilion receptions. Discount not available on monthly payroll memberships.

If you have any questions about membership at Kent Sport, please email memberships@kent.ac.uk

To stay up-to-date with the latest Kent Sport news, activities and special offers, Like us on Facebook and follow us on Instagram and Twitter @UniKentSports.

Arts Council funding for Studio 3 exhibition

Dr Eleen Deprez, curator of the Studio 3 Gallery, has won an Arts Council grant for £14,000 for the forthcoming exhibition Hair: Textures of Belonging.

Hair: Textures of Belonging will explore the gendered and racial aesthetics of hair as signifier of black and gendered identity. The exhibition will celebrate the work of these artists and the diversity of black culture, and to promote diverse representations of beauty beyond the white aesthetic. The impact of the exhibition will be amplified by a day of performance and workshops at the Gulbenkian Theatre on campus.

The exhibition will feature (amongst others) Marina Abramovic, Zhu Tian, Sonia BoDyce, Yuni Kim Lang, and Sonya Clark.

The exhibition will run from 4 March until 4 April 2020.

For more details of all upcoming exhibitions in the Studio 3 Gallery, please click here.

For more details on Arts Council funding, please visit this website.

Alumna Nimasu Namsaren at the BFI Future Film Festival

Congratulations to BA (Hons) in Film alumna Nimasu Namsaren, whose film Mavzhuda has been accepted for the 13th BFI Future Film Festival.

The BFI Future Film Festival, which takes place at BFI Southbank from Thursday 20 February to Sunday 23 February 2020, will feature 50 shorts from emerging UK and international filmmakers age 16-25. The festival also offers a variety of industry workshops, lectures and networking opportunities.

Mavzhuda, which will be shown at the festival on Sunday 23 February, tells the story of the eponymous 12-year-old girl who immigrates to Russia from Uzbekistan with her family. Her new life in St Petersburg is challenging and in order to fit in she starts to forget her own culture and language and loses the connection with her grandmother. One day after school, Mavzhuda ignores her while walking together with other kids, and the pain that she inadvertently brings to the family helps her to find her own place in the hectic world around.

Further information and tickets for the festival can be found here.

Amalia Arvaniti speaks at Oxford University

Amalia Arvaniti, Professor of Linguistics in the Department of English Language and Linguistics, will be giving a talk at Oxford University on Monday 10 February. The talk is titled ‘Intonational phonology in the light of crosslinguistic evidence of variability’.

The talk will report final results from Amalia’s British Academy grant on intonation meaning and its relation to the formal representation of intonation; this research, together with other related work, forms the basis for SPRINT (Speech Prosody in Interaction: The form and function of intonation in human communication) Amalia’s ERC Advanced Grant.

Politics in Wonderland – Templeman exhibition

‘Politics in Wonderland: Sir John Tenniel at 200’ is the theme of a new exhibition in the Templeman Gallery space.

The exhibition, curated by Jo Baines and Tom Kennett from Special Collections & Archives, will run until 20 March. Its launch marks the bicentenary of the birth of illustrator and political cartoonist Sir John Tenniel (1820–1914).

For almost 40 years, Tenniel was the chief political cartoonist for Punch magazine, a Victorian publishing institution, producing classics of the genre such as ‘Dropping the Pilot’. Today, however, Tenniel is chiefly remembered for the illustrations he provided for Lewis Carroll’s ever popular and strange tales Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871).

This exhibition celebrates Tenniel’s contribution to political cartooning in his own work for Punch and in the enduring influence his Alice illustrations have had on subsequent generations of political cartoonists. The exhibition features original cartoon artworks, cuttings and publications from the British Cartoon Archive by cartoonists including Nicholas Garland, Vicky, Strube and E H Shepard.

The exhibition accompanies a production of Alice in Wonderland: A Musical Dream Play, to be performed on Friday 21 February by the University Music department.

First performed in 1886, written by Henry Savile Clarke and with music by Walter Slaughter, the ‘dream play’ was overseen and authorised by Carroll himself, and was the only adaptation to be made with his approval. The production features some of Tenniel’s illustrations projected onto the stage, evoking the original atmosphere of the novel brought so vividly to life by Tenniel’s quirky, characterful images. Tickets are available on the Gulbenkian website.

Award of Honorary Degrees from 2020 onwards

The next meeting of the University’s Honorary Degrees Committee will take place on 4 March 2020 and we are looking for suggestions/nominations for the award of honorary degrees for the consideration of the Committee.

Suggestions should be returned by the deadline of Wednesday 19 February 2020, either by email to J.L.Pearsall@kent.ac.uk or by post to Jo Pearsall, Council Secretariat, The Registry, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NZ.

At its meeting in March 2020, the Committee will be considering suggestions for awards in 2020 and beyond and, to ensure the award of honorary degrees across a broad range of academic disciplines and subject areas, it would be helpful to receive at least one or two suggestions from each School. We would also like to encourage nominations in the area of medicine and health sciences, to celebrate the opening of the Kent and Medway Medical School in 2020.

You can find all the necessary information, including the nomination form in Word and pdf formats on the honorary degree nominations website.

The published information includes the criteria for awarding honorary degrees and the honorary degrees that are available, with guidance notes. To get an idea of the calibre of University of Kent honorary graduates, our honorary graduates website shows recent recipients and short biographies.

Anyone can put forward a nomination so if you have any questions about this or wish to put forward a nomination, please email Jo Pearsall.

Run, Hide, Tell advice – watch the new videos

Staff and students are encouraged to find out more about what to do in the unlikely event of a terror incident on or off campus.

Our Campus Security Run, Hide, Tell webpages include three new videos with UK Government advice on:

How to react to firearms or weapons attacks
How to identify and respond to suspicious behaviour
How to identify and deal with suspicious Items.

Mark Arnold, Head of Security at Kent, comments: ‘While there is no specific intelligence about any threats to the University, these videos are a timely reminder of common sense advice. I’d urge all members of our community to set aside some time to view them.’

The webpages also include advice on what to do if you find a lost or suspicious unattended item, on or off campus – find out more by clicking on the new tab: ‘Unattended items – lost or suspicious’.

And there’s a reminder of the Government’s key ‘Stay Safe’ principles:

RUN – find the best protection available, out of sight does not mean out of danger.

HIDE – see if you can locate the attackers, what type of weapon is being used, the direction the attacker(s) are travelling. Limit access and secure your environment. Lock the doors and remain as quiet as possible.

TELL – contact the police via 999 then Campus Security via 01227 82(3333), give them all the information you have.

Find out more and view the new videos on the Campus Security Run, Hide, Tell webpages.

Apply now for ACU Global Summer School Grant

As an ACU member, Kent is pleased to be able to offer an opportunity to apply for a grant of up to £2000 to attend a summer school at ACU member universities overseas. The host institutions include universities in Canada, India, South Africa and a number of other countries. The full list of hosts and further details is available on the ACU website.

Eligibility criteria:

Grants are available to students who meet both of the following criteria:

Registered as a current undergraduate student
A UK citizen, or with UK refugee status

In addition, students must also meet at least one of the following criteria:

From a family with a combined annual parental income of under GBP 25,000, or
The first person in their family to go to university, or
A care leaver

How to apply:

Review the summer schools available, including checking the full costs.
Identify a first and second choice of summer school
Submit an application form to goabroad@kent.ac.uk by midnight on Monday 24th February 2020
Following an internal selection process, the university will nominate up to two candidates for the grant.
ACU will make the final decision on the grant award.

Further Information:

International Partnerships will be running three drop in sessions for anyone who is interested in the award and would like further details or help with their application. These will take place on the following dates:

Thursday 13th February 2-4pm
Wednesday 19th February 12 – 2pm
Thursday 20th February 10-11.30am

Located in the Registry extension, First Floor, Rm 155.

Alternatively, please email goabroad@kent.ac.uk for more information.

For more information on all our summer school opportunities please visit our Go Abroad Website.