Author Archives: Allie Burnett

Union representative nominations

You are invited to make nominations for three representatives of non-union members of staff to join the Joint Staff Negotiating and Consultation Committee.

One vacancy is for a member of academic-related staff and two are for other staff members. A fourth place is already filled by Dr Sarah Hyde representing academic-related staff.

What is the Joint Staff Negotiating and Consultation Committee?

The Committee is the main forum for consultation and negotiation between the University and its staff. Its membership includes management and union and staff representatives and meets each term.

Nominations for appointment to the vacancies have to be proposed and seconded by two other members from the relevant staff group.

Elections, if necessary, are held using a simple majority system.

The period of appointment is three years commencing from the date of election and representatives are eligible for re-election once.

Enquiries and nominations should be directed to the Secretary of JSNCC, Maddy Withers, either by:

Closing date 14 August 2014 

Masterclass on neglect

Kent’s Centre for Child Protection has developed a masterclass focusing on the issue of child neglect.

Aimed at professionals and carers, the masterclass explores the range of issues surrounding neglect including:

  • Lessons learnt from recent high profile cases
  • Different forms of neglect
  • Interagency perspectives
  • Professional responsibility and the challenges of direct work with children who have suffered neglect

For full details of the masterclass and booking information, visit the Centre for Child Protection’s webpages or email Karen Paine.

Notes: The Centre for Child Protection at the University of Kent is a centre of excellence and innovation in training, research and practice. Co-Directors Professor David Shemmings and Dr Jane Reeves established the Centre following the Munro Review (2011), which stressed that Continuing Professional Development is crucial for professionals working to safeguard and protect children. The Centre received the Times Higher Education award for ‘Outstanding ICT initiative of the year’ in 2013 for its work on developing avatar-based simulations to deliver professional training and qualifications.

Contact: Email h.v.armstrong-viner@kent.ac.uk

Graduation ‘selfie’ winner

Congratulations to William Oldham, a Medway Sports Science graduate, for winning the #KentGrads selfie competition.

At this year’s summer congregation ceremonies, we asked our graduates to send us their ‘selfies’ from the day.

We received over 200 entries on Instagram. You can view all the selfies and more photos from our summer graduations on Tagboard.

William’s winning selfie taken at Rochester Cathedral received over 300 likes and he won £100 worth of Amazon vouchers.

Follow @UniKentLive on Instagram.

Thank you to everyone who took part!

Call for submissions on ‘the secret’

Scholars are invited to make a submission for Skepsi – a peer-reviewed online journal produced within the School of European Culture and Languages (SECL).

 

Skepsi is run by SECL PhD/MA candidates, with the support of established and early career academics, and commits to publishing the work of postgraduate students and emerging scholars.

Following the recent success of ‘The Secret in Contemporary Theory, Society, and Culture’, a two-day postgraduate conference held at Kent, we are calling for contributions to a future issue of Skepsi.

In an effort to capture and expand the broad and interdisciplinary interest in the ‘secret’, we are seeking to gather ideas, explorations, critiques and theories that examine this topic.

In revealing the governmental practice of spying on millions of conversations, the Snowden case triggered a sudden upheaval in the definition of public and private spheres. It has also prompted us to question what constitutes a secret, and what function secrets have in society today.

Some of the questions in which we are interested include: How does the formation of a secret inform, and how is it informed by, the boundary separating the private from the public sphere? What ethical issues are involved in questions of transparency, concealment, and revelation? Does the conventional understanding of the secret – rightly or wrongly – presuppose a hidden ‘truth’ buried beneath the lack of meaning at the level of language? Is the secret itself a function of something like Derrida’s ‘différance’, and therefore an illusion or mere surface-effect of language?

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to, the following and their interrelations:

  • Power relationships: what kinds of power relationships can exist between a secret holder and those who do not, or wish to, know it? Who does a secret alienate?
  • Sociological and anthropological approaches to secrets: collective and individual secrets and the question of surveillance; how secrets vary across cultures.
  • Language and communication: does interpreting a text reveal its secret(s)? Or is there a semantic void within any text, the lack of a fixed signified or ‘secret’, which nonetheless generates its apparent meaning(s)? What is a coded language?
  • Secrets in literature, and in the visual and plastic arts.
  • Secret histories: subaltern and other marginalised histories; Nationalism, identity, and concealing or reinventing the past; the role of State secrets in history; how the definition and function of the secret has changed in history.
  • Philosophical approaches to secrets (analytic and continental): do secrets exist? Are they logically possible? What relations are maintained between secrets, language, and intersubjectivity, and between secrets and the unconscious?
  • Psychological and psychoanalytic perspectives on the structure and function of secrets. Emotional responses (guilt, shame, etc.).

Submissions are invited from academic staff, postgraduate students and independent scholars.

Any of the submitted articles selected by the Editorial Board after peer review will be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal, to be published in Spring 2015.

Articles, which should not exceed 5,000 words, should be sent, together with an abstract of about 250 words and brief biographical details about the author, to skepsi@kent.ac.uk.

The deadline for submission is 30 September 2014.

For more about the journal Skepsi, please see its blog.

Contact: secl@kent.ac.uk

Fifty Years of Feminism at Kent: Call for papers

Scholars are invited to submit abstracts for a ’50 Years of Feminism at Kent’ conference taking place at Kent on 27-28 June 2015.

The conference, one of a number of projects marking the University of Kent’s 50th anniversary, is entitled Austerity, Gender and Household Finances, and will explore four thematic streams:

  • Austerity and Housing (organised by Kent Professor Helen Carr)
  • Austerity and Debt and Credit (organised by Dr Julia Gumy from Bristol and Dr Simone Wong from Kent)
  • Austerity and Parenting (organised by Dr Ruth Cain from Kent)
  • Austerity and Financialisation: What can we learn from the Global South? (organised by Kent Law School Teaching Assistant Serena Natile).

Full details of each thematic stream are available in the official Call For Papers document.

Serena Natile said:

‘Many European countries and across the world are currently facing a time of financial crisis. This has supposedly brought with it a need for austerity in order to ride out the crisis. We have thus seen a reduction in public spending which in turn has led to a tightening of fiscal policies and an immediate impact upon the provision of welfare benefits and public service provision. 

‘The financial crisis has also led to other concerns such as unemployment, stagnation of incomes, access to credit, indebtedness, homelessness, etc. In such times of austerity, it is often the vulnerable in society, and particularly women, who bear the brunt of spending cuts. We aim to initiate a critical interdisciplinary dialogue to explore and interrogate the impact of austerity on households as well as the scope and effect of existing public policies and legal and regulatory measures on families and their financial circumstances.’

Submissions to the conference are invited from a broad range of disciplines including law, sociology, social policy, economics, psychology and gender studies. Abstracts of 200-300 words should be submitted via email to kentausterityconference@kent.ac.uk by 15 October 2014.

Additional speakers at the event will include: Professor Mary Evans (London School of Economics); Professor Suzanne Soederberg (Queen’s, Canada); and Professor Rebecca Tunstall (York).

The conference has been organised as part of the Radical Women: 50 years of Feminism at Kent project which is celebrating past achievements at Kent, including the establishment of the first taught programme in Women’s Studies in this country.

The project will also feature a public lecture in the Open Lecture series to be given by a leading figure in feminist activism and a series of feminist films to be shown and discussed at the Gulbenkian Cinema on the Canterbury campus.

Email: a.p.shieber@kent.ac.uk

Helping tennis stars analyse their game

Information Technology student Charlotte Hutchinson has been rubbing shoulders with tennis stars during her time working with IBM.

She said; ‘I had the best two weeks at Wimbledon. I’ve had so much fun and met some amazing people!’

Charlotte was tasked with working on the Media Production Team providing the players on all the show courts with their match statistics and data on a memory stick within 30 minutes of the match ending.

She said; ‘It was surreal to think that some of the worlds biggest and best tennis players would be analysing their game on the USB sticks I created and built for them.’

Charlotte posed for selfies with Judy Murray and Ross Hutchins, Andy Murray’s best friend, and doubles player.

Charlotte who is a student of Information Technology with a Year in Industry at the Medway campus, is currently undertaking her placement year at IBM, the main sponsor of the event.

Hundreds of staff at IBM applied to represent the organisation at the championships and Charlotte was one of only 24 who was successful in gaining a place for the fortnight.

The rigorous selection process involved an application form, selection by an IBM manager, shortlisting by the Wimbledon team, and finally an assessment centre with group exercises and a one-on-one interview.

IBM has been a supporter of the All England Lawn Tennis Club and The Championships for 25 years. The School of Computing has a long standing relationship with IBM and many students have been placed at IBM for their paid Year in Industry and been employed by them after graduation.

Footsteps Project

As part of the University’s 50th anniversary celebrations, students, staff, alumni and members of the wider University community can become part of the very fabric of Kent by having a short message or memory engraved on a brick, and set in our new celebratory pathway by the Templeman Library.

The Crab and Winkle Path will commemorate the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway route (known locally as the Crab and Winkle Line), which ran directly below this part of the University grounds.

Set at the heart of the Canterbury campus, this new path will recognise those who have made the University what it is today.

All funds raised will help build the Kent Opportunity Fund, which supports students at Kent by funding scholarships, student projects and bursaries. Minimum donations are £50 for a two line brick, and £90 for a four line brick.

Join us, and help the next generation of Kent students to walk in your footsteps.

To find out how you can become involved: