The School of Economics at Kent is pleased to announce a new affiliation with the Global Labor Organization (GLO), which will connect the University of Kent with over 1,500 academics and researchers worldwide.

Dr Matloob Piracha, Senior Lecturer at the School of Economics and Director of GLO, is confident that this new partnership will contribute positively to the excellent research environment of the School.

The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is a global, independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that has no institutional position. The GLO functions as an international network and virtual platform for researchers, policy makers, practitioners and the general public interested in scientific research and its policy and societal implications on global labor markets, demographic challenges and human resources. These topics are defined broadly in line with its Mission to embrace the global diversity of labor markets, institutions, and policy challenges, covering advanced economies as well as transition and less developed countries.

The GLO Network currently consists of over 1,500 Fellows and Affiliates from across the world.

GLO also runs a Virtual Young Scholars Programme (VirtYS).

The second session in the KPERN Communities of Practice Programme will be held on Wednesday 6^th November 1-2pm.

Kasia Senyszyn, a School of Arts PhD student specialising in accessibility in theatre and a member of the KPERN (Kent Public Engagement with Research Network), has been working with Sun Pier House (SPH) in Medway, on the ‘Open Arts My Self’ project. The ‘Open Arts Project’ is specifically aimed at blind and visually impaired, deaf and hard of hearing people, young people and their families. The project aims to investigate the value of socially engaged practice, looking at improving well-being and engagement with those people at risk of social isolation.

Project artists from SPH will join Kasia to talk about how the collaboration came about and what it has involved, how it worked in practice, experiences of working across very different organisations, and lessons learned from the whole process. Anyone who is interested in working with Sun Pier House should come along.

Please email Research Impact & Public Engagement Manager Maddy at peresearch@kent.ac.uk to book a space.

There are 3 further sessions in the Programme:

Session 3: External expert Jamie Gallagher: Evaluating Engagement

Half day workshop Wednesday 29^th January 2020 (time to be confirmed)

Jamie Gallagher is an award winning and nationally recognised engagement professional and trainer, specialising in evaluation of the impact of engagement activity.  After an overview of the engagement with research landscape, Jamie will move on to evaluation: the what, why and how. Participants will be supported to work on their own engagement and evaluation plans during the workshop.

Session 4: Laura Thomas-Walters: Innovative methods of engaging the public with research

Monday 10^th February 2020 1-2pm

Laura Thomas-Walters, a PhD student in Conservation Biology, commissioned her PhD quilt as a visual and tactile representation of the breadth of research undertaken at Kent. Laura worked with the Canterbury Quilters Society to produce the quilt, subsequently winning the Graduate School’s Postgraduate Community Experience Award. Laura will talk through the development of this innovative method of engagement, and where it will take her next.

Session 5: Dr Helen Brooks and Professor Mark Connelly: Gateways to the First World War – a plethora of engagement activity

Wednesday 4^th March 2020 1-2pm

Between 2014 and 2019, Gateways to the First World War was funded by the AHRC to support public engagement with the centenary of the First World War. In this session Dr Helen Brooks, a Reader in Theatre and Cultural History, and Mark Connelly, Professor of Modern History, will reflect on their experiences of a diverse range of public engagement activities: from talks and workshops to performances and lecture-concerts. They will discuss the ways in which they worked with community groups both as advisors and in developing participatory researcher projects, and reflect on the challenges and possibilities of this kind of work.

Shona Illingworth, artist and Reader in Fine Art, has co-organised two upcoming events which form part of a forthcoming art installation entitled ‘Topologies of Air’.

‘Topologies of Air’ examines the impact of accelerating geopolitical, technological and environmental change on the composition, nature and use of airspace. The work questions the terms by which airspace is currently understood, and invites us to look up and consider the air above their heads not as a void, free space, but as a multi-layered, complex cultural and legal space that is shared and personal, with a long history and rapidly-changing future. ‘Topologies of Air’ is commissioned and produced The Wapping Project and will be exhibited at Bahrain National Museum in 2020 before touring to The Power Plant, Toronto, in 2021.

The first event is Sky Forum, organised by Sharjah Art Foundation and The Wapping Project which will take place on Friday 11 October 2019 in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. The forum will bring together experts across history, culture, astronomy and space science in three panel discussions to explore the past, present and future relationship between people in the Arabian Gulf region and the sky as well as wider transformations of the composition, nature and use of airspace close to Earth and outer space beyond. The event will feature a conversation between Shona and Marta Michalowska, Artistic Director of The Wapping Project, which will also form an integral part of ‘Topologies of Air’.

The second event is The Airspace Tribunal, an international public forum established by Shona and Professor Nick Grief of Kent Law School, which will take place on Monday 14 October 2019 in Sydney, Australia. The tribunal is a hearing which invites representations from experts across a range of disciplines and lived experience to consider whether we need increased protection regarding the radical transformation of airspace. The hearing argues that the associated threats to human rights are not adequately addressed by the current legal framework, and also forms part of the installation.

The Airspace Tribunal’s inaugural hearing took place at Doughty Street Chambers, London in September 2018. Each hearing is being recorded and transcribed to form the drafting history of the proposed new human right.

Further information and tickets for Sky Forum can be found here, 

Further information and tickets for The Airspace Tribunal can be found here.