A team from SSPSSR will be answering staff questions between 13.00 and 14.00 this Wednesday 11 May.

All staff are welcome to come along and enjoy some refreshments while hearing answers to the questions colleagues have about the referendum.

Questions can be submitted anonymously in advance via one of the question boxes located in the Gulbenkian and SSPSSR.

You can also submit your question via email to b.j.leruth@kent.ac.uk – though questions submitted this way won’t be completely anonymous.

The event will take place in the Cornwallis 3rd floor staff room, Canterbury campus.

We’d like to invite University staff to a workshop to help us shape our strategy for 2016 – 2020.

We’re developing an Information Services strategy to guide the next five years of technology and library services at Kent.

We’re running a series of lively and thought-provoking workshops, open to all University staff. If you’d like to be part of a conversation shaping Information Services for the future, book a place on one – email is-admin@kent.ac.uk, stating which date you’d like to come.

Workshop dates 

Academic staff (all departments) – a choice of four dates:

• Friday 13 May 13:30 – 15:30
• Monday 16 May 13:30 – 15:30
• Friday 20 May  13:30 – 15:30
• Friday 27 May 10:00 – 12:00

Professional services staff (all departments):

• Tuesday 17 May 13:30 – 15:30

Academic Division staff can attend any of these sessions.

About the workshop
The workshop will be a lively interactive session. We’ll look at how we work with and for students, academics, professional services and partners. There will be a graphic facilitator on hand to make a visual narrative of the workshop and ‘draw’ out themes from the activities.

You’ll have the chance to:

• say what matters most to you about the future of Information Services
• understand Information Services better

What happens next?
We’ll be engaging with IS staff through a departmental meeting where we feed back and discuss workshop findings. We’ll use the results to create a draft strategy document, which we’ll circulate from June.

Sensory Walks in Canterbury are running every Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 12.00, 14.30, 17.30 for the next few weeks. You are cordially invited to participate.

The walks take one hour and the meeting point is the Beaney M­useum Café in Canterbury city centre. Tea and cake are provided at the end of the walk.

If you participate until 15 May, you will receive a £10 Amazon Voucher from the School of Architecture.

Sign up to walk with your senses by sending an email to kv50@kent.ac.uk

The Innovation, Creativity and Enterprise (ICE) showcase event brought together SME (small to medium-sized enterprise) owners from across the south east with students and staff.

The event demonstrated the University’s cross-disciplinary approach to supporting and developing projects with external partners and delegates were brought together to hear about cutting-edge innovation which could impact business.

The event was opened by Professor Philippe De Wilde, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Research & Innovation and presentations were given by key business and University representatives on various subjects from cyber-security to evolving technologies.

Delegates had a unique opportunity to see a selection of the University’s latest innovations and technologies including Virtual Reality and Eye Tracking in Psychological Research Oculus Rift Virtual Reality equipment from the School of Psychology at the event’s Innovation Zone. The School of Computing also contributed to the Zone with a Lego City which demonstrated how Internet of Things sensors and actuators can be used to enhance existing public services.

Guests were also asked to view posters on applied research from various schools at the event and vote for their favourite which was announced later in the afternoon.

The annual event was hosted by Kent Innovation & Enterprise and was held on Thursday 28 April at Woolf College.

On 20 and 21 June 2016 Canterbury Cathedral will host a series of public interactive talks, walks, sights and sounds created by Humanities staff at Kent.

This unique partnership between Cathedral staff and University artists, architects and historians will help participants to discover and learn about previously unknown, unexplored or secret spaces and aspects of the Cathedral, be they architectural, private, sacred, public, acoustic, communal or dramatic.

Each of the events will invite audiences from diverse communities to respond to the building afresh, and in some cases for the first time.

The exhibitions will be open all day with Festival events running from 5pm, culminating in a stunning light projection designed to reveal the lost Gothic colours of the Cathedral.

Developed by Kent’s Professor Paul Allain, Associate Dean of Research and Innovation in the Faculty of Humanities in collaboration with the Cathedral, Questions of Space will draw on hundreds of years of history to ask what this space means for us today.

The Festival also aims to engage new audiences with heritage as part of The Cathedral’s developing Canterbury Journey project.

Bookings for the events will open on 1 May and further information on Questions of Space and how to book is now available.

Questions of Space is supported by the University’s Faculty of Humanities Research Fund, its Public Engagement with Research Fund and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

It is hoped it will become an annual event in the calendars of the Cathedral, the University and Canterbury itself.

Sumio Kobayashi, a PhD student in Linguistics, has recently won third prize at the Weimar Spring Festival of Contemporary Music in Germany, for orchestral composition on marimba.

The festival attracted international competition, with entrants from all over the world, including Germany, Austria, Korea, Japan, China, Croatia, France, Spain, Italy and the Switzerland.

Music composition is related to Sumio’s own PhD research in linguistics, supervised by Professor Amalia Arvaniti, with a project on ‘Prosody of Language and Music’, examining the relationship between speech rhythm and music.

The festival was held from 13 -17 April. To see the original German news article (in German), please see the webpage: http://via-nova-ev.de/?p=1010

A delegation from the University has visited alumni, current and prospective partner universities, exchange students and other friends of the University in Southeast Asia.

The delegation first visited Malaysia, where an event for alumni and friends was held at the Kuala Lumpur Hilton with over 120 people in attendance. This annual event has been a fixture for the past six years and has contributed to raising Kent’s profile in Malaysia – a country in which Kent has an alumni community of over 1,400. In the past five years, the number of students coming to Kent from Malaysia has more than doubled, rising from 115 registered students in 2010/11 to 271 in 2015/16. The event was covered by Malaysia’s English-language newspaper The Star.

During the visit, discussions took place with the University of Malaya with a view to developing a partnership with the School of History. Professor Gaynor Johnson represented the School and a reciprocal visit is being discussed. Meetings took place with MARA (who support students from Malaysia to study overseas), the Ministry of Higher Education and with UK Trade and Investment. These meetings provided the opportunity to explore possibilities for collaboration across a range of areas and to raise the University’s profile as a destination for students from Malaysia who are interested in studying in the UK.

The delegation then travelled to Hong Kong where staff visited partner universities including the University of Hong Kong, City University of Hong Kong, Chinese University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU). Over 70 students are currently studying on one of two Master’s programmes at HKBU which are run by both the HKBU Department of Mathematics and Kent Business School.

A cocktail reception was held at the Renaissance Harbour View Hotel with attendees including alumni, contacts from partner universities and other organisations, and a number of Kent students who are currently on a year abroad (either at a university or working in industry) in Hong Kong. Colleagues also met with the British Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong. The visit received press coverage from English-language newspaper the South China Morning Post and Ming Pao, a Chinese-language newspaper based in Hong Kong.

Staff then travelled to Singapore and to mainland China, taking the opportunity to meet informally with alumni and to visit existing partner universities (including Tongji University and China Foreign Affairs University).

Dr Anthony Manning, Dean for Internationalisation, said: ‘These visits are important in raising the profile of the University in countries of strategic importance. We place emphasis on supporting student recruitment; strengthening and deepening existing partnerships; seeking opportunities to build new relationships and, of course, to engaging with our alumni in these countries. It isn’t just about what happens during the few days that we are there; we seek to ensure that there are a wide range of people in each country who are informed about Kent’s strengths and successes and can act as ambassadors for the University all year round.’

A major new art exhibition to showcase international emerging and professional artists will launch at The Historic Dockyard, Chatham, on Friday 6 May.

Titled Of the Sea, this fascinating exhibition explores the controversial ‘freedom of the seas’ principle through a diverse range of artistic media. The variety of work includes lens based media, sculpture and performance art and explores powerful topics such as conflict, ecology, territory, migration, piracy, border disputes and the ebb and flow of oceans.

Of the Sea is a project in partnership with the University’s School of Music and Fine Art (SMFA) and The Historic Dockyard. It represents the culmination of The Historic Dockyard’s biennial open art competition (Art in the Dockyard) which this year received a record number of submissions from across Europe.

All works in the gallery show are eligible for two prizes; The Dockyard Prize, which will be judged on its contextual relevance to the Dockyard’s historical legacy; and The Curators’ Choice, which will be awarded to a work which expresses global, social and political significance. The winning artists in both of the categories will each receive a £750 cash prize.

The works were selected by a distinguished and specially invited judging panel comprising Adam Chodzko, international award winning artist and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at SMFA; Exhibition Curator, Hannah Conroy from the Artist Pension Trust (formerly Folkestone Artworks Curator); Kathleen Palmer, Head of Art at Imperial War Museums; Victoria Pomery OBE, Director of Turner Contemporary, Margate; and artist Island Projects Director, Nicole Mollet.

Of the 38 international artists selected for the exhibition and accompanying screening programme Perpetual Liquidity (28 May, 2pm – 4pm, the Dockland Church) the University’s School of Music and Fine Art has two of its artists included (lecturer, Steve Klee and MA student, Fiona Townend).

There will be a private launch on Thursday 5 May with a speech by Vice-Chancellor of the University, Professor Dame Julia Goodfellow.

The exhibition will run until 24 July in No.1 Smithery: The Gallery.

Two members of the Kent Hospitality team – Anne Munday and Mike Sault – have been presented with a Pride Award for outstanding service.

The Pride (‘Personal responsibility in delivering excellence’) Award recognises members of Kent Hospitality staff who go out of their way to deliver excellent customer service.

In April, the Award was awarded jointly to Anne Munday, Keynes College Receptionist and Mike Sault, Hospitality Assistant, KBS Servery.

Anne was nominated for producing a detailed ‘Knowledge of the College’ document for her fellow receptionists prior to moving over to Keynes College Reception, providing a wealth of experience from many years of service at Park Wood College. Mike was nominated for delivering first class services to KBS staff, students and visitors, as well as his excellent first aid skills, which have been put to the test on many occasions, most recently when a student fainted last month.

Any Kent Hospitality staff (permanent or casual) may be nominated from Canterbury and Medway campuses. The award is given in April, September/October and December with each winner receiving £100 of shopping vouchers.

Nominations can be made by any member of University staff, students or visitors. Red nomination boxes are located in all Kent Hospitality’s catering outlets in Canterbury and Medway, as well in College reception areas. Alternatively, you can download the form and email it to Rooie Thomas.

Please make your nominations detailed and provide as much information as possible. The panel looks for staff who achieve more than what is expected in their role.

The deadline for the next award is 13.00, Wednesday 28 September 2016.

For further information, contact/see: Rooie Thomas: R.J.G.Thomas@kent.ac.uk, T: +44 (0)1227 827659, Tanglewood.

Picture shows: Award-winners, Anne Munday and Mike Sault, with Commercial Services Director Simon Westerman. Picture by Rooie Thomas.