Author Archives: Alice Allwright

Care first webinars w/c 22 March 2021

Our official Employee Assistance Programme provider, Care first offers a numbers of services and provide useful advice and support, including weekly webinars.

This week’s (Monday 22 March – Friday 26 March) webinars are as follows:

Monday 22 March 2021 – ‘World Happiness Day’
Time: 12.00-12.30 – to register please click on this Go to webinar link

Tuesday 23 March 2021 – ‘Stress and Finding Ways Through It’
Time: 12.00-12.30 – to register please click on this Go to webinar link

Wednesday 24 March 2021 – ‘Separation Anxiety’
Time: 12.00-12.30 – to register please click on this Go to webinar link

Thursday 25 March 2021 – How Care first can support you’
Time: 12.00-12.30 – to register please click on this Go to webinar link

Friday 26 March 2021 – ‘Things to consider when planning to go on holiday this year’
Time: 12.00-12.30 – to register please click on this Go to webinar link

Care first webinars w/c 15 March 2021

Our official Employee Assistance Programme provider, Care first offers a numbers of services and provide useful advice and support, including weekly webinars.

This week’s (Monday 15 March – Friday 19 March) webinars are as follows:

Monday 15 March 2021 – ‘How Care first can support you’
Time: 12.00-12.30 – to register please click on this Go to webinar link.

Tuesday 16 March 2021 – ‘Tips for Nutrition & Hydration’
Time: 12.00-12.30 – to register please click on this Go to webinar link

Wednesday 17 March 2021 – ‘How Care first has supported through a year of COVID-19’
Time: 12.00-12.30 – to register please click on this Go to webinar link

Thursday 18 March 2021 – ‘Lifting of Lockdown Anxiety’
Time: 12.00-12.30 – to register please click on this Go to webinar link

Friday 19 March 2021 – ‘Sleep Anxiety for World Sleep Day’
Time: 12.00-12.30 – to register please click on this Go to webinar link

New web resource for academic and research staff

Article by Dr Alison Charles, Researcher Developer (Academic) in the Graduate and Researcher College.

Kent’s commitment to supporting colleagues who research is further demonstrated with the launch of a new section of the Graduate and Researcher College (GRC) website. The ‘Academic and Research Staff‘ webpages provide a wealth of information for academic researchers and are designed to showcase the wide range of information, resources and support available to them.

Divided into four sections comprising 27 pages, this online portal includes information about the University’s strategy to support staff who research and emphasises our efforts to build a supportive and inclusive research culture. Highlights include details of forthcoming central and Divisional training and development sessions, as well as recordings of and material from previous sessions which can be viewed on demand via the relevant GRC SharePoint pages.

Professor Paul Allain, Dean of the Graduate and Researcher College, commented: “The recent expansion of the GRC to enable us to support staff as well as postgraduates marks the start of an exciting journey for researcher development at Kent. Our new webpages are one of a series of steps on the road to increasing awareness about the services and support which are provided by the University for our academic and research colleagues.”

A further phase of web development is planned for Summer 2021, which will focus on the three areas covered in the  Researcher Development Concordat: environment and culture, employment and professional and career development. In the meantime, we trust that our new digital resource will become your first port of call for information relating to academic and research staff development.

For any further information please email acresdev@kent.ac.uk

E-Learning webinar: What can we learn from distance learning?

The E-Learning Team are pleased to announce that the next event in our series of ‘Digitally Enhanced Education webinars’ will take place on Thursday 1 April, from 10.00-12.10, with the theme ‘What can we learn from distance learning? Supporting teaching in the post-COVID world’.

Please find the agenda for the event below:

10.00 – 10.05 – Dr Phil Anthony (University of Kent): Introduction

10.05 – 10.20 – Associate Professor Chie Adachi (Deakin University, Australia): Going beyond ‘blended learning’ – re-imagining digital learning for higher education

10.20 – 10.35 – Sally Jordan (Open University): Lessons for assessment in a post-Covid world

10.35 – 10.50 – Dr Mark O’Connor (University of Kent): What can we learn from distance learning?

10.50 – 11.05 – Professor Diana Laurillard (UCL): Teachers collaborating to improve blended learning

11.05 – 11.20 – Sarah Knight (Jisc): How are students experiencing learning online? What the data from our digital experience insights 2020-1 student surveys is telling us

11.20 – 11.35 – Dr Chris Headleand (University of Lincoln): Cutting The Rubber Band of Practice: Developing Post-COVID Pedagogies

11.35 – 11.50 – Andrew Clegg (University of Portsmouth): Help! I have not left yet. Engaging staff in transition journeys to online delivery – reflections from an emergent motorway analogy.

11.50 – 12.05 – Associate Martin Compton (UCL): Dealing with dissonance: digital education in crisis and beyond as a challenge to mindset.

12.05 – 12.25 – Dr David Baume (University of London): Keeping it good and simple

If you would like to join the webinar series, please express your interest by enrolling on the Digitally Enhanced Education Webinars Moodle module, or by requesting access to the Team ‘Digitally Enhanced Education webinars‘ linked to the webinar series.

Colleagues from outside the University of Kent are very welcome to join and so feel free to circulate. Please register your interest via the link here if you haven’t already. We add you the Microsoft Team linked to the series.

We hope to see you there.

The E-Learning team

Challenging Racism: White Privilege live webinar – 18 March

Article from the Challenging Racism team

Continuing with our ‘Challenging Racism’ campaign the next Live Webinar on Thursday 18 March at 12.30. We are delighted to welcome Dr Deborah Gabriel speaking on the topic of White Privilege. The ‘Live webinar’ is a 90min online webinar facilitated by Inclusive Employers, with a guest speaker, panel discussion and Q&A session.

Dr Deborah Gabriel

Dr Deborah Gabriel is the Founder and Director of Black British Academics, a global network of scholars focused on addressing racial inequality in higher education and society, established in 2013. Key areas of focus are transformation in teaching, learning and research, with an emphasis on equity and social justice. She created and leads the Ivory Tower Project on race and gender inequality in academia and developed the 3D Pedagogy Framework to decolonise, democratise and diversify the higher education curriculum.

Her current areas of focus are community empowerment and collaborative social justice. Her intellectual work is interdisciplinary and broadly focused on the dynamics of race, gender and culture in media, communication, and higher education. These areas of inquiry are approached from a critical race and Black feminist standpoint to analyse the relationships between race, power, privilege, and inequality. As a consultant, she specializes in strategic approaches to equity, diversity and inclusion centred on social justice and transformation in higher education and society.

Book Your Place Today: Eventbrite Registration Link.

The aim of the ‘Challenging Racism’ campaign is to promote unity, not division and to help understand and develop more inclusive behaviours. To do that we all need to increase our awareness and understanding of racism and how it can be tackled within Kent, to ensure all staff and students feel safe and empowered.

Please share this and encourage your contacts and teams to sign up so that we can all work together and take the first steps to address racism at Kent and beyond.

#EDI #challengingracismtogether #choosetochallenge

If you have any questions, contact us via challengingracism@kent.ac.uk

Music Department’s In Conversation with Libby Burgess

The Music Department’s In Conversation series continues on Weds 10 March at 19.00, with pianist and festival director, Libby Burgess.

Pianist, chamber musician and accompanist, Libby’s work has taken her to festivals and concert-halls around the country. She is also Artistic Director of the New Paths Festival, founded in 2016 and which takes place each spring in Beverley, and Co-Artistic Director of Beverley’s own Chamber Music Festival.

In this interview with Head of Music Performance, Dan Harding, Libby reflects on finding new ways to engage audiences for the New Paths Festival in light of the pandemic, her own responses as pianist and vocal coach, and looks ahead to her ‘ Bach Project48,’ setting herself the ambitious challenge of playing all of Bach’s 48 Preludes and Fugues in each of the forty-eight counties of England, and what effect playing the entire set in different venues throughout the country might have on her own relationship to the famed set.

The interview is free to watch on the Music Department’s YouTube channel.

Dr Philip Boobbyer publishes book on Lord Rennell

Reader at the School of History, Dr Philip Boobbyer, has recently published his new book, The Life and World of Francis Rodd, Lord Rennell (1895-1978): Geography, Money and War (Anthem Press, 2021). Dr Boobbyer has long known that Francis Rodd, Lord Rennell was a possible subject for research, but it’s only been in recent years that Philip explored his late grandfather’s life in greater detail. The book follows an article Dr Boobbyer published in the journal War in History.

Having already written two books of a biographical nature, S. L. Frank: The Life and Work of a Russian Philosopher 1877-1950 (1995) and The Spiritual Vision of Frank Buchman (2013), this third book was enhanced by papers at the Bodleian Library and the Royal Graphic Society, and Dr Boobbyer’s access to family letters of a more personal nature.

Francis Rodd, Lord Rennell led an incredibly interesting life; he ran the first military government in Allied-occupied Europe in World War II, made a robust stand against the Mafia in Sicily, he was well-known as a geographer for his journeys to south-central Sahara in the 1920s and President of the Royal Geographical Society (1945-48), friend of Lawrence of Arabia and was an early influence on the Long Range Desert Group, which was active in guerrilla operations in North Africa during the Second World War.

Here’s the Telegraph’s review of Dr Philip Boobbyer, book, The Life and World of Francis Rodd, Lord Rennell (1895-1978): Geography, Money and War .

Vinyl Countdown: Vote for four colleagues competing live on air!

There’s a special episode on Thursday 11 March at 14.00 of Vinyl Countdown, the Music department’s live webshow featuring a panel battling live on air for viewers’ votes for their nominated album to be crowned Album of the Week!

Hosted by Dan Harding, Head of Music Performance, the virtual studio will welcome Dr Harmonie Toros (School of Politics and International Relations), Dr Olly Double, (School of Arts), Dr Chris Deacy (School of European and Cultural Languages) and Will Wollen (School of Arts).

The show will stream live on Facebook, Twitter, and also here on YouTube.

Viewers can vote in the comments on their preferred platform of choice!

Make sure you watch when the show goes live; who will win this week’s coveted title ? You’ll have to be there to find out – and make sure you vote!

The ‘One Hour Degree’ has been trademarked!

The One Hour Degree game, developed by the Student Success Team, has received its official trademark certificate from the Intellectual Property Office this month. The One Hour Degree was created using the open source software called Twine which is used for telling interactive, nonlinear stories.

The trademark ensures that the University of Kent has protected use of the OHD logo and is recognised as the creator in relation to online games services provided by computer networks and global communications networks.

To date the One Hour Degree has been played by over 7,300 people across 125 countries worldwide and recently won the Guardian HE 2020 Award for Digital Innovation. Existing students continue to benefit from earning 15 Employability Points when they successfully complete the game. To date, only 1 player has been lucky enough to find the secret page by locating all the hidden ‘Easter Eggs’!

Kent Africa Summit 2021: Redefining African Identity

Article by the Kent Africa Summit Team

We would like to warmly welcome you to Kent Africa Summit 2021!

This year, the theme of the summit is “Redefining the African Identity in the 21st Century” – as we seek to have conversations on what it means to be an African today, and use those conversations to build and inform the future of the African continent.

The Kent Africa Summit was borne from a need to create a platform to bring together individuals and generations from differing backgrounds to talk about how we as a community can reflect on our history, analyse current affairs, and discuss matters to push for change and development. It brings together participants from around the globe, and provides exceptional opportunities for individuals to network, engage in conversation, and to leave with a greater understanding of the multi-faceted identity of the African continent.

Year after year, the conference has been a highlight of student-run events on the University of Campus, featuring a full day of talks with a gala dinner afterwards. However, given COVID-19 and its disruption to our everyday lives, we have had to reimagine this year’s summit.

This year, we are welcoming you to the first virtual Kent Africa Summit, in which we will have various panel discussions taking place between 8 – 12 March 2021. A selection of speakers include Nyasha Mugavazi of Kugali Media, and Sena Voncujovi, an African Spirituality Activist.

The topics of discussion will include creative industries in Africa, African spirituality, mental health in black communities and more. Though we have adjusted some aspects of the summit, our core aims remain the same. The summit will still provide participants with the opportunity to hear from inspiring leaders, teachers, and creatives with a passion for African stories.

We welcome you to take this summit, and we hope it will be an enjoyable and insightful experience for all.

Tickets to sign up to the event can be found on the Eventbrite website

And follow us on our Instagram and Twitter accounts too, where we’ll be sharing updates on the speakers invited for the conference.