Dr Alvise Sforza Tarabochia and Dr Alex Marlow-Mann, lecturers in Italian in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, are hosting the Society for Italian Studies Themed Conference, ‘Visions of Italy’, taking place virtually at the University of Kent on 10-11 September 2020.

Popular conceptions of Italy typically revolve around the visual: the beauty of its landscapes and its historic legacy of fine art and architecture. This dates back at least to the medieval period, and the innovations of artists such as Giotto and visionary writers like Dante. In the twentieth century, it is in the fields of cinema, photography, art, fashion and design that Italy has had the most marked impact around the world.

Concurrently, Italy has also been a favoured subject of visual representation: from Grand Tour photographic albums to mainstream Hollywood films set in Italy, there is no lack of foreign representations of the country and its inhabitants. This conference will explore Italian visual culture and the way in which Italy and Italians have been depicted.

Alvise says: “This year the Society for Italian Studies Themed conference convenes online only, to bring together members of the Society despite the disruptions that 2020 brought about. We are very excited by the variety of themes and speakers the programme brings together and we very much look forward to Professor Gundle’s keynote address.”

The role of the Society for Italian Studies (SIS) is to further the study of Italy, Italian language, literature, film, thought, history, society and arts in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It represents the discipline, providing a voice for Italian Studies at national and international level and participating in the work of the University Council of Modern Languages to promote the study of Modern Languages.

Registration is open on the Kent Hospitality website.

The PRIDE Award recognises members of Kent Hospitality staff who go out of their way to deliver excellent customer service.

Do you know of a Kent Hospitality staff member (permanent or casual) that showed excellent customer service over the summer helping residential students unable to make it home or prepping for the new look student arrivals this year? If so, please take a few minutes to make your nomination online or email pride@kent.ac.uk. The deadline is midday Wednesday 16 September.

Please make your nominations detailed, providing as much information as possible why the nominee should be considered for the award. The panel are looking for staff who achieve more than just what is expected in their role (i.e. hardworking, professional, positive and friendly attitude).

The award is given out four times a year with each winner receiving £100 of shopping vouchers, a certificate and PRIDE badge.

Congratulations again to our most recent Pride Award winner – Liz Ralph, Assistant Housekeeping Manager, who won the June award. In her own time, Liz produced hundreds of practical, colourful and reusable facemasks for the housekeeping team members working on campus throughout lockdown and for vulnerable people in her community.

For further information or for guidance on submitting nominations please contact pride@kent.ac.uk

Bookings are now open for the sixth annual Medway Festival of Learning and Teaching hosted by the Universities at Medway. This year the focus is ‘Creative and Inclusive Assessment and Feedback’

The Festival is taking place virtually via Microsoft Teams on Thursday 10 September from 9.15 to 13.10, with the  Keynote speakers being Professors Debbie Hollie and Ann Quinney. To register a place for this event please visit the Medway festival website.

About the Festival

The Medway Festival of Learning and Teaching is co-jointly organised by the Universities of Greenwich, Kent and Canterbury Christ Church who share the Medway campus.

The Festival aims to share, celebrate and promote their practice to benefit all students studying on the Medway campus. It is a consistently strong theme that runs through the sector and is a priority for all three universities and their partner colleges.

As in previous Medway Festivals, the event enables the Universities to reflect on their own development needs and career aspirations as they start the new academic year. Attending or presenting at the event can help colleagues to evidence professional development or maintain ‘good standing’ for Advance HE (formerly HEA).

Even though Covid-19 has had an impact on the launch of the Signature Research Themes project, work has been going on behind the scenes and the team are now very excited to invite you to the Selection Event on Tuesday 15 September.

The event will be live streamed on Facebook and YouTube between  9.30 to 13.00 (links available soon) in collaboration with KMTV.

The event will include, opening remarks from the University’s Vice-Chancellor Karen Cox, as well the Themes Task Group. Each of the eight themes leads will then present their vision for Kent’s Signature Research Themes. For more information please take a look at Kent’s first Signature Research Themes.

Questions can be submitted throughout each of the presentations, and after the event a dedicated website will be set up with responses to the questions.

Ahead of the event you can find out more about the shortlisted themes, the people behind them, and how you can get involved.

The team look forward to seeing you there!

A walk-through coronavirus testing facility is now open at Rutherford Car Park in Canterbury, as part of the Government’s UK-wide drive to improve the accessibility of coronavirus testing for communities.

Anyone with coronavirus symptoms, however mild, can get a free swab test that takes less than a minute. Tests should be booked or ordered as soon as symptoms begin on the NHS website or by calling 119. All test most be booked in advance, with no drop-in tests available.

Those being tested will be required to follow public health measures, including social distancing, not travelling by taxi or public transport, practising good personal hygiene and wearing a face covering throughout (including when travelling to and from the testing centre). The centre is totally self-contained and externally managed, with no need for individuals being tested or test centre staff to access any University buildings. It is also monitored by 24/7 security.

Anyone attending an appointment at a walk-through testing will be provided with guidance on getting to and from the test site safely, which is easily accessible without a car. Testing is available for everyone, with additional support for vulnerable groups and people with disabilities.

The site opened for testing at 14.00 on Saturday 5 September. The opening hours during the mobilisation phase are as follows:

5 September 2020 – 14.00 – 17.00

6 September 2020 – 10.00 – 17.00

7 September 2020 – 08.00 – 20.00

And then 08. 00 – 20.00 thereafter

The site is part of the largest network of diagnostic testing facilities created in British history, including 72 drive-through sites, 53 walk-through sites, 236 mobile units, home testing and satellite kits and five laboratories.

Anyone testing positive for the virus in England will be contacted by NHS Test and Trace to help them track their contacts. This will help people to identify who they may have been in close contact with, protecting others from further transmission.

Close contacts of those testing positive will also hear from NHS Test and Trace, advising them to stay at home for 14 days to prevent them from unknowingly spreading the virus. They will be advised to also book at test if they develop symptoms.

See more information on visiting a local test site

We are hosting our next Undergraduate Virtual Open Event on 3 October 2020, from 10.00 – 14.00 UK.

Our last undergraduate event last July was a great success with 1,652 attendees on the day, as it’s a virtual event we’re able to keep the link live for longer and saw new attendees join the event each day. Virtual open days are a great opportunity to all potential students to engage with course presentations from our specialist academics and attend live Q&A sessions, as well as find out more about our facilities on campus.

It would be a great help if our colleagues could promote the virtual event across their platforms, either on their school websites and on social channels.  As well as forwarding on to friends or family members who may be interested in our undergraduate courses at Kent. Please see further information about the event and register on the Virtual Open Day website.

Here’s some positive feedback from the last event: 

Dr Debbie Reed, the University’s Head of Digital and Lifelong Learning, has received an award for her outstanding contribution to the dental nursing profession.

Debbie was presented with the BADN 2020 Outstanding Contribution to Dental Nursing Professional Practice Award at the BADN 80th Anniversary Virtual Afternoon Tea.

Presenting the award, BADN President Jacqui Elsden said: ‘Over the last twenty five years or more, Debbie has contributed to the advancement of Dental Nurses across many areas of dentistry and has not only inspired myself to achieve my potential but has inspired many others to do so and has recently acquired her doctorate in Education, one of only a handful of Dental Nurses to do so.’

Debbie commented: ‘As an academic and a Doctor of Education, I am reassured to know that my work and research is valued, and moreover has had a practical application, in terms of the transformational opportunities it has provided, and will continue to provide, to those employed in the dental sector… I am humbled to know that I have been an inspiration to others.’

Debbie, a former BADN Chairman, trained as a dental nurse at the Royal Navy School of Dental Training in 1987. She went on to hold varying clinical and non-clinical posts over the next 20 years, working with all three Armed Forces organisations, in the UK and overseas, until she left the Royal Navy in 2007 and joined the staff at the University of Kent.

Debbie is registered with the General Dental Council and holds a number of additional professional and vocational qualifications and awards in education, leadership and management.

Find out more about the award on the BADN webpages.

As our official Employee Assistance Programme provider, Care first offers a numbers of services and provide useful advice and support.

Their weekly webinars continue this week (Monday 7 September – Friday 11 September) are as follows:

Monday 7 September 2020 –  ‘‘How Care first can support you & an update on our services’
Time: 12.00-12.30 – to register please click on this Go to webinar link.

Tuesday 8 September 2020 – ‘‘Making positive changes to your wellbeing post lockdown’ ’
Time: 12.00-12.30 – to register please click on this Go to webinar link

Wednesday 9 September 2020 –  ‘Coping with uncertainty during COVID-19’
Time: 12.00-12.30 – to register please click on this Go to webinar link

Thursday 10 September 2020 – ‘World Suicide Prevention day: Understanding suicide’
Time: 12.00-13.00 – to register please click on this Go to webinar link

Friday 11 September 2020 – ‘What is Counselling & What to expect when you call’
Time: 12.00-12.30 – to register please click on this Go to webinar link

Dr Stella Bolaki, Reader in American Literature and Medical Humanities in the School of English, has edited a special issue of The Journal of Medical Humanities on ‘Artists’ Books and Medical Humanities’.

The Journal of Medical Humanities is a peer-reviewed journal devoted to the interdisciplinary study of medicine and medical education. It is particularly interested in three areas of investigation: medical humanities, cultural studies, and pedagogy.

This special issue developed from Stella’s research project Artists’ Books and Medical Humanities, brings together international contributors who are artists, scholars, educators, and archivists.

Collectively, the contributions demonstrate the importance of intimate, multi-sensory knowledge that this innovative art form offers in areas such as illness communication, pedagogy and public health. In addition to academic essays, the issue contains excerpts from five books that are part of Prescriptions: Artists’ Books, a recent acquisition of the University of Kent Special Collection & Archives. The books that were selected for inclusion in the special issue use different structures and formats.

They were photographed in such a way so as to give readers the possibility to experience the powerful effects of artists’ books, a medium which requires touching and handling. Finally, the edition features a response to the material by renowned book artist and visual theorist Johanna Drucker.

Stella’s open-access article, titled ‘Contemporary Artists’ Books and the Intimate Aesthetics of Illness’, examines artists’ books by three contemporary female artists: Penny Alexander, Martha A. Hall and Amanda Watson-Will. Interrogating narrative’s dominance in medical humanities research, it explores how artists’ books represent lived experiences of illness in a distinctively palpable way.

Drawing attention to the imaginative and aesthetic dimensions of such representations, the essay argues that artists’ books allow their makers an ‘intimate authority’ that extends beyond narrative legitimacy or a form of struggle against the medical gaze.

For more details, and to read some of the open access articles of this issue, please see the publisher’s website. 

Dr Olly Double, Reader in Drama, has just published a chapter in a new collection entitled Victorian Comedy and Laughter: Conviviality, Jokes and Dissent (Palgrave, 2020).

The book is an innovative collection of essays, and is the first to situate comedy and laughter as central rather than peripheral to nineteenth century life. It presents new readings of the works of Charles Dickens, Edward Lear, George Eliot, George Gissing, Barry Pain and Oscar Wilde, alongside discussions of much-loved Victorian comics like Little Tich, Jenny Hill, Bessie Bellwood and Thomas Lawrence. Tracing three consecutive and interlocking moods in the period, contributors to the collection engage with the crucial critical question of how laughter and comedy shaped Victorian subjectivity and aesthetic form.

Olly’s chapter is entitled ‘Deliberately Shaped for Fun by the High Gods’: Little Tich, Size and Respectability in the Music Hall’, and it explores the work of music hall comedian Harry Relph (1867–1926) – best known as Little Tich.

Little Tich is the subject of a mural at Kent (pictured), located outside the Aphra and Lumley Theatres.

To read more about the collection, please see the publisher’s page.