Alumni who graduated in 1969 have been invited to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their graduation at a special golden graduation ceremony in Canterbury Cathedral on Friday 19 July 2019 at 10.30.

The Development Office started the golden graduations last year – thought to be the first such event at a UK university – to celebrate the lifetime relationship the University has with its alumni.

The arrangements for the day will see our graduates from 1969 process into the Cathedral with our graduands, robed in graduation gowns with the appropriate faculty hood from the degree. They will receive a golden graduation certificate in the same way as this year’s graduands receive their degree certificate – conferred by the Chancellor in front of your guests.

The occasion connects alumni with our newest graduates, and it was an impressive sight to see students from the 1960s process into Canterbury Cathedral with our newest graduates last year.

We do not hold current contact information for all who graduated in 1969. If you are in touch with an former students or staff from this year please ask them to contact Bryony Ayling in the Development Office by email events@kent.ac.uk.

The Department of Classical and Archaeological Studies hosted an all day celebration of Classics on 3 April 2019, running two sets of workshops for members of the University of the Third Age (U3A), as well as talks for applicants, an afternoon showcasing postgraduate and staff research in the Department of Classical & Archaeological Studies, a reception, and a performance of an ancient Greek comedy, Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, by undergraduates in the evening.

The workshops, run by Dr Rosie Wyles, offered members of the U3A an introduction to Greek comedy and explored the issues raised by Aristophanes’ Lysistrata for ancient and modern audiences. Participants had the opportunity to see the play in action by dropping into the dress rehearsal in the afternoon or staying to watch the performance in the evening. In feedback, participants said that they had ‘thoroughly enjoyed’ all aspects of the day and that after attending the workshop, they found that their understanding and appreciation of the performance was much greater.

The performance of Lysistrata in the evening received riotous – and well-deserved – applause. Dr Rosie Wyles said ‘The production was entirely the work of  undergraduates and they produced a fast-paced, brilliantly acted, slick production which was hilarious. They certainly did the ancient playwright justice – it was superb to see them bring the comedy to life’.

The Department of Classical and Archaeological Studies is grateful to the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies and the Institute for Classical Studies, London for their generous support of the workshops and play.

On Wednesday 20 March, the Success Accelerator Programme brought 15 talented first-year students to London to experience the world of business by taking part in a mini-hackathon. They were put to the test, using their creativity and skills to analyse and find a solution to a business problem.

The Success Accelerator Programme, which is sponsored by the Kent Opportunity Fund, aims to inspire students at Kent to achieve a career in the City. The programme includes students from the School of Economics, Mathematics, Statistics, and Actuarial Science and Law. Currently, there are 14 alumni mentors, all professionals dedicated to improving outcomes for those students looking to achieve their own version of success by gaining employment in London. These mentors work in partnership with the University of Kent to support students with mentoring and work experience that will serve as a springboard for their future careers.

The mini-hackathon gave students a flavour of the working world and exposed them to some key concepts of Financial Technology (FinTech). Students worked in teams as “consultants” to think of a solution to a problem using FinTech and Alumni mentors acted as senior partners, there to empower them. They created a professional pitch deck and presented their concepts to industry professionals and graduate employers, who were board members; judging their work to what would be considered in the real world! The consultants delivered strong pitches and provided great answers when responding to questions from the board, who were very impressed with their proposed solutions.

This was a fantastic event, which gave our first-year students a great insight into FinTech and a career in the City. We look forward to seeing what else our mentees are involved in during the programme, later on, this year!

The Department of Modern Languages was delighted to welcome Dr José Ramón Calvo Ferrer from the Universidad de Alicante, Spain, who visited the University during the final week of the spring term through the Erasmus Staff Mobility scheme.

José Ramón gave a two-hour revision seminar and further drop-in tutorials for final-year Hispanic Studies students visited The Maplesden Noakes School in Maidstone, one of the University of Kent’s Partner Schools, to deliver interactive workshops to GCSE students on grammar and the festivals and traditions of Spain. He is pictured with language teachers at Maplesden Noakes School.

Later in the week he visited Fort Pitt Grammar School in Chatham to deliver sessions to GCSE and A-Level students.

We look forward to welcoming José Ramón back to the University during the next academic year.

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 Dr Francis Stewart, Implicit Religion Research Fellow at Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln.

Francis was born just outside Belfast and we learn how she had to leave Northern Ireland in order to study World Religions. Chris and Francis discuss growing up during the bomb scares and the at the time of the ‘ring of steel’ in her native Northern Ireland, her working class punk identity (and her book ‘Punk Rock is my Religion’), the way religion has been used as a political tool, jumping up and down in her cot to Status Quo as a baby, being the first person in her family and the estate where she lived to go to university, the use of religion in superhero films, and about wanting to be a tattoo artist when she was 15.

Future interviewees will include Gavin Esler, Chancellor of the University of Kent, and Professor Clive Marsh, Head of the Vaughan Centre for Lifelong Learning at the University of Leicester.

Professor Nicola Shaughnessey, Professor of Performance in the Department of Drama and Theatre and Dr Dieter Declercq, Assistant Lecturer in Film and Media Studies, along with Dr Chiao-I Tseng from the University of Bremen, are organising an international conference entitled ‘Pro-Social Play! Storytelling and Well-being across Media Borders’. The conference will be hosted by the School of Arts from Thursday 17 October to Saturday 19 October 2019.

Plenary speakers include Charles Forceville (Media Studies, University of Amsterdam); Tobias Greitemeyer, Social Psychology (University of Innsbruck; Anja Laukötter, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin); and Harry Yi-Jui Wu, (Medical Ethics and Humanities, Hong Kong University).

The conference will also include a screening of Dark River (2017), followed by a round table discussion with Clio Barnard, the award-winning director and Reader in Film in the School of Arts, as well as workshops by artists at the arts charity People United on prosocial performances.

This truly interdisciplinary and international conference brings together scholars of  empirical and theoretical research as well as practitioners working on narrative arts for promoting pro-social behaviours and mental well-being across different media. To date, the pro-social narratives have often been studied with a focus on testing people’s media exposure and pro-social effects. Nevertheless, as explicitly pointed out by most of these studies, we also need to investigate how the narrative factors are designed, structured and mobilised in a specific coherent way to effectively achieve the intended prosocial and mental health purposes. Hence, it is crucial to advance the theoretical link between the design choice of narrative, media technological features for engaging people in difficult topics and their pro-social response. Establishing the link is precisely the main objective of this conference. This includes, but is not limited to, the following topics:

• Narrative factors for evoking people’s empathy, achieving educational purposes
• Link between prosocial behaviour and mental health
• Storytelling, practical application and mental health
• Narrative medicine​
• Technology features of different media platforms that afford, strengthen or constrain the pro-social, persuasive functions of narratives
• Impact of social cultural conventions on different narrative designs
• Historical perspectives of pro-social storytelling
• Transmedia comparison of pro-social messages, for instance, across film, TV, comics, video games, games, literature, etc.
• Pro-social storytelling in social media
• Pro-social storytelling through live performances and live interaction
• Balance between emotional engagement and message credibilities
• Empirical evidence of pro-social, persuasive functions in storytelling across media
• Pro-social narrative designs for children and adolescents

Submissions may take the form of research papers on these themes, or workshops by artists, designers, health professionals and other practitioners working on pro-sociality and storytelling.

Please send abstracts of 300 words max. along with a short biography of 100 words max. in PDF or Word format to mail@prosocial-narrative.org by Sunday 30 June 2019.

For more details about the conference, please visit their website

Kent Law School Professor Donatella Alessandrini has been awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship worth more than £162,000 for a unique research project analysing the role of world trade law in the generation and distribution of economic rewards between and within countries.

The one-year project ‘A Reverse Robin Hood? Analysing the effects of world trade law on the transnational distribution of economic value’, will offer the first sustained legal analysis of the World Trade Organisation’s contribution to the proliferation of Global Value Chains (GVCs) and to the unequal distribution of the economic value along the chains.

Drawing on socio-legal studies, world system theories and feminist economics, the project will explore how trade law brings GVCs into being, helping to create and distribute economic rewards transnationally.

Professor Alessandrini said: ‘The manufacture of products with inputs sourced from around the world dates back centuries. However, the pace, range and intensity of interactions in so-called ‘Global Value Chains’ is changing rapidly, with significant consequences for the people and companies involved. The law of the WTO has played a vital, yet hitherto unexplored, role in this process.’

The project will run from September 2019 to September 2020.

Professor Alessandrini is Co-Deputy Head at Kent Law School. She is also Co-Director of the Social Critiques of Law Centre (SoCriL).

The TESSA deadline is approaching!

Last year, we introduced the TESSAs. These Teaching Enhancement Small Support Awards are intended for any Kent colleagues who are interested in encouraging and enabling teaching and learning innovation; or who have a great idea that would improve the quality of teaching, teaching-related activity, support for teaching, or the student learning experience at Kent.

You can apply for funding of between £500 and £3,000, with up to £5,000 on offer for large, high-impact, collaborative projects operating across Schools and ideally in more than one Faculty, or across Schools and PSDs. All colleagues who contribute to teaching, learning or teaching support are eligible to apply – you don’t have to be an academic, or based in a School.

The closing date for the second round of applications this year, and the fourth round overall, is 12 noon on Tuesday 14 May 2019. This is for projects to start during the summer of 2019 or in the Autumn Term 2019-20; and we will tell you the results by Tuesday 28 May. If you are interested in applying, but for a project to start in the Spring Term 2019-20 or later, don’t worry – there will be another round of applications in Autumn 2019.

You can find out more, and download the short application form for a TESSA here – successful applicants have been very generous in allowing us to add their forms to the website, so you can see some strong applications, and work out if you can link up with someone doing a project similar to the one you are planning.

Please send us your applications and help improve the quality and enjoyment of education and the student learning experience here at Kent! If you have questions, please get in touch with April (A.M.S.McMahon@kent.ac.uk) or Jess (J.R.W.Sutherland@kent.ac.uk).