What is codebar?

codebar is an opportunity to network, socialise and do some coding. The workshops are volunteer led and consist of 30 minutes of socialising with food and drink, followed by a lightning talk, then coding.

codebar encourage new participants to work on their HTML/CSS, JavaScript, Ruby, Python or Git tutorials. They also help them understand programming concepts.

About the workshops

codebar participants are paired with a coach and can either go through the online courses available via the codebar.io site, or get assistance with their own projects.

The workshops are free to attend and led by Yoyo Design, and form part of the County wide Kent codebar chapter.

Coaches

codebar are always on the lookout for more developers to join their community and help coach at their workshops. If you are interested in being a coach then please visit here.

Participants (Codebar Students)

codebar participants (codebar Students) come from a variety of backgrounds. Some want to become full-time developers, whereas some would like to learn the basics of coding in a supportive environment.

The details:

We have two sessions coming up, one on the 24^th February the other on the 30^th March.

They run from 6.30-9 in Sibson seminar room 6.

Please register before attending.

The February session is worth 15 Employability Points.

To find out more and to register visit the Hub for innovation website.

Congratulations to BA (Hons) in Film alumna Nimasu Namsaren, whose film Mavzhuda has been accepted for the 13th BFI Future Film Festival.

The BFI Future Film Festival, which takes place at BFI Southbank from Thursday 20 February to Sunday 23 February 2020, will feature 50 shorts from emerging UK and international filmmakers age 16-25. The festival also offers a variety of industry workshops, lectures and networking opportunities.

Mavzhuda, which will be shown at the festival on Sunday 23 February, tells the story of the eponymous 12-year-old girl who immigrates to Russia from Uzbekistan with her family. Her new life in St Petersburg is challenging and in order to fit in she starts to forget her own culture and language and loses the connection with her grandmother. One day after school, Mavzhuda ignores her while walking together with other kids, and the pain that she inadvertently brings to the family helps her to find her own place in the hectic world around.

Further information and tickets for the festival can be found here.

Amalia Arvaniti, Professor of Linguistics in the Department of English Language and Linguistics, will be giving a talk at Oxford University on Monday 10 February. The talk is titled ‘Intonational phonology in the light of crosslinguistic evidence of variability’.

The talk will report final results from Amalia’s British Academy grant on intonation meaning and its relation to the formal representation of intonation; this research, together with other related work, forms the basis for SPRINT (Speech Prosody in Interaction: The form and function of intonation in human communication) Amalia’s ERC Advanced Grant.

As an ACU member, Kent is pleased to be able to offer an opportunity to apply for a grant of up to £2000 to attend a summer school at ACU member universities overseas. The host institutions include universities in Canada, India, South Africa and a number of other countries. The full list of hosts and further details is available on the ACU website.

Eligibility criteria:

Grants are available to students who meet both of the following criteria:

• Registered as a current undergraduate student
• A UK citizen, or with UK refugee status

In addition, students must also meet at least one of the following criteria:

• From a family with a combined annual parental income of under GBP 25,000, or
• The first person in their family to go to university, or
• A care leaver

How to apply:

• Review the summer schools available, including checking the full costs.
• Identify a first and second choice of summer school
• Submit an application form to goabroad@kent.ac.uk by midnight on Monday 24th February 2020
• Following an internal selection process, the university will nominate up to two candidates for the grant.
• ACU will make the final decision on the grant award.

Further Information:

International Partnerships will be running three drop in sessions for anyone who is interested in the award and would like further details or help with their application. These will take place on the following dates:

• Thursday 13th February 2-4pm
• Wednesday 19th February 12 – 2pm
• Thursday 20th February 10-11.30am

Located in the Registry extension, First Floor, Rm 155.

Alternatively, please email goabroad@kent.ac.uk for more information.

For more information on all our summer school opportunities please visit our Go Abroad Website.

Dr Amhed León Tellez, Head of the Center for Studies in Management and Local Development at the University of Bayamo in Granma province, Cuba, is visiting the UK to develop his research and to collaborate with Dr Rebecca Ogden, Lecturer in Latin American Studies in the Department of Modern Languages, and Professor Par Kumaraswami (University of Reading) on a project about local development, heritage and tourism in Cuba, a project that has received GCRF funding.

Dr Amhed León Tellez will be hosted by the Department of Modern Languages between Monday 10 and Saturday 15 February, and on 13 February he will deliver a talk entitled ‘Economic transformations and local development in contemporary Cuba: what role can universities play?’

Cuba is experiencing extraordinary structural transformations of its economy in the midst of the recent tightening of the economic blockade imposed by the United States. Local development is an important mechanism to boost economic dynamics and social welfare within such economic shifts. This demands capacity-strengthening and knowledge, as well as raising the role of science and technological innovation. In this paper Dr León Tellez will share insights from his research in this field, including the role played by the university in local development.