Professor Joe Connor, Emeritus Professor of Inorganic Chemistry in the School of Physical Sciences, died on 14 April 2018.  Professor Connor was appointed as Professor of Inorganic Chemistry in 1981 and was Director of the Chemical Laboratory from 1981 to 1990. He was appointed Dean of Natural Sciences in 1988, and in 1990 he was appointed Pro-Vice-Chancellor (until 1996). Before Kent, he had been at Manchester.

His research interests included organometallic chemistry and then later in his career specialising in thermochemistry of organometallics. He enjoyed teaching and was a clear minded and calming influence in the Chemistry Laboratory and Faculty of Natural Sciences.

Professor Mark Burchell
Dean of Sciences

There will be a funeral service for Joe Connor at St Thomas of Canterbury Roman Catholic Church on Monday 30 April 2018 at 14.30.  On Tuesday 1 May at 11.00, there will be a celebration of Joe Connor’s life. This will be held at the University’s Darwin College, Conference Suite 1.

Professor Jim Brown, Emeritus Professor of Experimental Physics, died in April 2018.

Professor Brown was appointed to the Readership in Experimental Physics from 1 September 1965 and appointed Professor of Experimental Physics from 1 April 1971. He was appointed Director of the Physics Laboratory in 1976 and he remained Director until 1982. He was appointed Emeritus Professor in 1985 following his retirement. After 1985, he continued to be closely associated with the University, acting as internal examiner in 1991, and still teaching for many years.

These are brief notes, for a life rich in a warm humanity which touched, supported and helped so many of those who came in contact with him.

As he often reminded students in his lectures on magnetism, during World War II Professor Brown worked with the Royal Canadian Navy on degaussing ships and on underwater sound, including the trials of the new hydrophone array on the captured U885.

He was demobilized in Scotland as Electrical Lieutenant RCNVR in October, 1945 just in time to begin his doctorate in Low Temperature Physics at the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford. Then, wanting adventure and to explore, he went to Lingnan University in Canton, China. Work on a new type of expansion liquefier to produce the first liquid helium in Asia was interrupted by the arrival at his University of the advancing victorious Red Army during the establishment of the Communist Government. This was followed the next year by the expulsion of Westerners including Professor Brown. He used to happily regale colleagues with stories of his time in China, of which he clearly had many fond memories. As with all his stories, there was often a deep respect for others.

He then spent two years on liquid helium research at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario. During the Korean war, he heard from former students on both sides of the conflict. From Ontario he returned to British Columbia, publishing work on liquid helium and superconducting thin films. He was proud of this time in British Columbia, and enjoyed receiving updates from there.

Arriving in Kent with the first undergraduates in 1965, he established the Low Temperature Laboratory here. With colleagues, the first application of the quartz microbalance to measure thickness of the helium film was effected and measurement made of the Bernoulli effect in the flowing electronic fluid of a superconductor, as well as other work to elucidate the contact potential of metals under stress. An NERC investigation of acoustic imaging to explore its feasibility for use in coal mines was carried out on large scale in the air. More recently, Professor Brown has been a member of the Applied Optics Group and still attended meetings on campus in his 90s.

Professor Brown used to visit the campus regularly until earlier this year. He was popular with students, with some of the “First 500” holding him in high regard and still in touch with him all these years later. Staff found his warm, gentle approach to life of comfort, reminding us of the good things in life.

Professor Mark Burchell,
Dean of Sciences

Update from David Nightingale, Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost:

Further to my email yesterday, the GDPR information sessions for staff have proved to be very popular and so we have moved the Canterbury venues to Keynes Lecture Theatre 1. If you have tried to register and been told it’s fully booked, you should now be able to book using the links below.

Also, to clarify, all staff from all departments are welcome to attend any session. If you are part of a faculty, you may find it more helpful to attend one focused on your area as the questions in the Q&A portion of the session may be more pertinent to you. Should you be unable to attend, or should your team require bespoke information, please contact the Information Compliance team or the Development Office directly.

The sessions will include an overview of GDPR, what it means for Kent, and how we are preparing. There will also be an opportunity to ask questions. The Information Compliance team and the Development Office will use the sessions to determine the main points of concern for staff in order to develop resources and guidance which will subsequently be made available on the Information Compliance website.

A reminder of the sessions:

• Tuesday 17 April 10-11.00, Keynes Lecture Theatre 1 (Social Sciences) Register here.
• Friday 20 April 10-11.00, Keynes Lecture Theatre 1 (Humanities) Register here.
• Monday 23 April 10-11.00, Keynes Lecture Theatre 1 (Sciences) Register here.
• Thursday 26 April 10-11.00, Pilkington Building, Room 130 (All), Register here.
  NB change of venue

I hope you will find the sessions useful.

The KentVision Programme invites you to one or more of our Open Forums – sign-up is open now so save a place while they’re still available!

As we prepare and transition to KentVision there is lots to share. With at least one event each month, we’ll cover enough ground that there is something of interest for everyone.

Always on a Wednesday afternoon from 14.00 to 17.00, dates, agendas and everything else you need to know is available here.

Broadly the same each month, at the Innovation Centre in Canterbury we’ll start with a welcome including refreshments and an opportunity to open discussions before attendees split roughly equally across two rooms. Two sessions run in parallel to offer a choice and if you just can’t choose, go to both! Each session is repeated for you to swap rooms and see everything there is on offer in a group size inviting of interaction.

At Medway, a more traditional event with presentations and demonstrations held in one room, still with a generous portion of time for networking, discussion and of course refreshments.

We hope you’re able to join us, but places are limited, so we ask you let us know you’re coming by signing up.

We look forward to seeing you at a Forum soon!

Don’t know much about the KentVision Programme yet? There’s lots of resources online to get a feel for the coming changes, understand what the Programme is doing and what that means for you. And you can always get in touch.

Want a better grasp of the wider changes related to the move to KentVision? Check out our Student Lifecycle Library, it starts with a number of overarching concepts to get to grips with, and will quickly grow to include much more information on Student Lifecycle Administration.

A new website has been launched to outline our successful bid with Canterbury Christ Church University for funded places to establish a medical school.

Following the go-ahead from the Government and Health Education England on 20 March, the two universities are now developing the Kent and Medway medical school, the first medical school for the county of Kent.

The medical school will bring together the institutions’ existing centres of excellence in health and medical education with local healthcare organisations to offer a new model of patient-focused medical training.

To keep up-to-date with plans for the new school, see the new webpages.

Professor Nick Grief has been recognised as a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA).

The award of a Senior Fellowship reflects his considerable leadership experience and sustained effectiveness in teaching and support for learning, both as Dean for Kent’s Medway campus, where the University has over 3000 students, and as a senior academic at Kent Law School teaching International Law and EU Law.

The Higher Education Academy (HEA) is an independent organisation, with a global network of 100,000 HEA Fellows. The HEA champions teaching excellence in higher education to improve student outcomes. HEA Senior Fellows must demonstrate a thorough understanding of effective approaches to teaching and learning support as a key contribution to high quality student learning. They must also demonstrate impact and influence through their leadership, management and mentoring.

Professor Grief is an expert on the legal status of nuclear weapons. His other research interests include air and space law and human rights, especially the right to protest, conscientious objection to the payment of taxes for military purposes and the use of international law by protesters in UK courts. Last November, in collaboration with Dr Shona Illingworth of the School of Music and Fine Art, he was awarded £1,500 from the University’s Public Engagement with Research Fund for a project entitled ‘The Airspace Tribunal’, which is advocating recognition of a new human right to protect the freedom to exist without physical or psychological threat from above​.

Professor Grief also practises at the Bar from Doughty Street Chambers, London. He was recently part of a team which represented the Marshall Islands in cases before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

The annual event celebrating the University of Kent’s Rome School of Classical and Renaissance Studies took place at the British Ambassador’s residence in the Villa Wolkonsky on 4 April.

The evening opened with the hosting of the European Innovation in Academia Awards by Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost, David Nightingale. The awards recognise individuals who have made a difference in higher education in Europe or North America and celebrate academic creativity and innovation.

This was followed by a lecture from Dr Thomas P Campbell, former Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from 2008-2017 who spoke about Raphael’s Tapestry Designs for Pope Leo X and their legacy at the Court of Charles I.

Academic Director of the Rome centre, Professor Tom Henry and several of our Rome centre MA students later continued to discuss the Mortlake tapestries based on Raphael’s Cartoons (three of which hang on the walls of the Villa Wolkonsky).

Jill Morris CMG, British Ambassador to Italy celebrated the performance of our students and the University of Kent on her Twitter feed. We are looking forward to celebrating at the residence again next year.

Remains of a Revolution is the title of a Distinguished Visitor Lecture by Sir Neil Cossons OBE FSA at the Royal Dockyard Church, Chatham, on Wednesday 11 April at 19.00.

In the 18th century, Britain was widely recognised as the first industrial nation and in the 19th century as the ‘workshop of the world’.  What we now call the Industrial Revolution defined this momentous episode in the nation’s history and the dramatic changes in society and the landscape that ensued, not only in Britain herself but across the globe.  And, of the great industrial endeavours that distinguished this revolution the Royal Dockyards were the world’s largest.  Chatham was one of these.

In this lecture, Neil Cossons will consider the legitimacy of these revolutionary assertions, explores the surviving evidence and addresses the conservation challenges it presents.  As a former Director of London’s Science Museum, and Chairman of English Heritage, he draws on a wide palette of international examples to demonstrate how for some a future has been assured, for others their legacy will be little more than a footnote to history.

This event is brought to you by The Historic Dockyard Chatham in partnership with the University of Kent. It is free and open to all.