Dr Kaitlyn Regehr, Lecturer in the Department of Media Studies, has featured in a BBC3 documentary entitled ‘Inside the Secret World of Incels’, which debuted on Saturday 14 July 2019.

The documentary explores the online subculture of ‘incels’ (the word being a portmanteau of ‘involuntary celibate’) who promote hatred, misogyny and racism, and have been linked to hate crimes and mass murders. To produce the documentary, director Simon Rawles gained unprecedented access to incel community members. The resulting documentary explores the how online ideology can push people into extreme behaviour and considers the reasons why this may occur, including mental health issues and trauma.

‘The police should be looking at this in the same way they look at religious extremism online’, explains Kaitlyn in the documentary. ‘I’ve been researching online misogyny for the past five years… I’ve really been looking at the potential for violence to spill off screens and on to streets.’

The documentary features a seminar delivered by Kaitlyn, where Kent Media Studies students discuss the impact of online hate speech.

The documentary contains strong language and some disturbing scenes. It is currently available on the BBC’s iPlayer here.

Watch the trailer here:

Dr Cecilia Sayad, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Film, has just been interviewed for the BBC Bitesize site regarding her expertise on the horror genre.

Bitesize is the BBC’s online support service for students studying GCSE level and equivalents.

The article explores how the film Midsommar (2019) fits into the wider history of horror films, what makes them scary, and how the genre has changed.

‘Having taught horror for many years, I see students have very different reactions to some classics: some find The Exorcist, for example, still very scary. The same applies to Rosemary’s Baby, which for some is still a disturbing horror film.’ However, reactions to certain films have changed, even if the story remains relevant: ‘it would be hard to find someone being too freaked out by James Whale’s Frankenstein, from 1931, but this has more to do with the film’s pace than its theme – which has never been more relevant, now that AI is a much bigger part of our lives.’

To read the article, please see the page here.

The Universities at Medway fifth annual festival of learning, teaching and assessment, entitled ‘Developing a culture of student engagement’, will take place on Thursday 12 September at the Medway Campus, Pilkington Building Room 008 from 09.30-14.30. The Festival is free to attend but you must book your place before 6 September by completing the online booking form.

Our keynote speaker will be Professor Colin Bryson.  His talk will be complemented by 17 presentations from colleagues from all three universities.  The programme and details of parallel sessions is available on the festival webpage.

This year’s theme is on student engagement.  It is a consistently strong theme that runs through the sector and is a priority for all three universities and their partner colleges.

The Annual Medway Festival aims to promote, share and celebrate our collective practices across all three universities and their partner colleges based at Medway to benefit all students studying at Medway.  Although our primary focus is the development of the Medway Campus, staff from Canterbury are most welcome to attend.

Over the next few months the way you print at Canterbury, Medway and Tonbridge will change.

Our Executive Group has approved a new Print, Copy, and Scan Policy (pdf) which will be rolled out across the University. The new policy was agreed in October last year and is vital to our reduction of both the costs and environmental impact of printing, as well as the procurement and maintenance costs of the equipment.

We’ll replace desktop printers with multi-functional devices (MFDs) that have combined print, scan and copy functionality. There will be fewer printers overall. The likely date of the first change will be 12 August 2019. Where it is necessary, desktop printers will be kept by exception.

We’re finalising locations with help from your school/department. Your departmental IT representative (excel file) should shortly be able to share the finalised printer map for your building with you. If you’re concerned that your needs may not be met, please discuss with your departmental IT representative.

We’ll let you know when your offices will switch to the new service and provide advice for using the new printers.

How printing will work

Why this is happening
We have over 850 desktop printers on campus – some of which only print a handful of pages a month. Desktop printers are expensive to maintain and operate, and are energy inefficient.

This change will enable us to:

• reduce costs considerably
• reduce energy usage by 55,000kgs of carbon a year
• reduce paper usage by around 15% – 3 million sheets of paper a year.

Our existing print provider, Apogee, will provide the service and dispose of excess printers in an environmentally-conscious and safe way.

Mark Reed, Head of Procurement

In the latest episode of the Nostalgia podcast series, Dr Chris Deacy, Reader in Theology and Religious Studies in the Department of Religious Studies, speaks to Professor Gerard Loughlin from the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Durham.

In this episode, we find out about Gerard’s earliest memory and his family background, and Gerard reflects on how many of his close friends went to university and the teachers who influenced him. The pair also discuss what it was like to be a student at Lampeter in the late 1970s; theology and film; cockroaches; writing long essays; making, as well as watching, films as a child; the grammar of film-making; watching films in Lampeter’s Arts Hall; student politics; CathSoc; John Hick and religious pluralism; keeping a diary; and whether Gerard is a looking back or a looking forward type of person.

Professor Catherine Richardson has been appointed as the academic Co-Director for our Institute for Cultural and Creative Industries.

Catherine brings a wealth of experience to the role, including past experience of the cultural and creative industries and her work as Associate Dean (Research and Innovation) for the Faculty of Humanities.

Catherine said: ‘I’m really excited to be taking on this new challenge, working with colleagues across the University and beyond to develop a clear and very distinctive vision for our research and education in the cultural and creative industries, and helping to ensure that our creativity spreads more broadly, right across the University, into every part of what we do at Kent.’

She will start in the role this summer, working with our other Co-Director, Liz Moran. Plans will be formed through Autumn 2019 with more announcements made in due course. We anticipate that the Institute will be a major catalyst for Kent as we build to our 60th anniversary in 2025, with work in education, research and innovation.

Professor Simon Kirchin | Dean of Humanities

Raphael – The Drawings, a Leverhulme-funded research project, that was co-organised by Dr Ben Thomas in the Department of Art History with colleagues from the University of Oxford, won a Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Public Engagement with Research in the Project category at the University of Oxford. The prize was awarded at a ceremony earlier this week, Wednesday 10 July 2019.

The two-year research project aimed to transform our understanding of how Raphael drew, employing an innovative multi-disciplinary approach to the close study of his drawings.

An exhibition at the Ashmolean, Raphael: The Drawings, embodied the essential findings and conclusions of the project’s work, bringing together 120 drawings in three strands: invention; orchestration and expression in which Raphael’s experimental approach, visual strategies and graphic language were highlighted. The exhibition attracted 67,000 visitors.

Ben was co-organiser of the project team with Professor Catherine Whistler, supported by the project research assistant Angela Maria Aceto.

The project is detailed on page 10 of the research awards brochure here. 

With the school holidays just around the corner, Kent Sport has the perfect solution to keeping your children entertained this summer – SummerZone!

With up to two weeks of professional sports coaching, led by qualified and DBS checked coaches and supported by sports supervisors, SummerZone cures the summer boredom and gets your children active. If your child(ren) are aged five to 14 and would enjoy taking part in a variety of sporting activities on a daily basis, including football, kwik cricket, tag rugby, hockey and tennis, then book them on SummerZone 2019!

SummerZone will run from 9.00 to 15.00 daily from Monday 12 to Friday 16 August (week one), and Monday 19 to Friday 25 August (week two). Late pick-ups are available from 15.00 to 17.00 and will include staff-led fun games and creative activities.

You can book places for SummerZone now through the website. Booking is available for one week, two weeks or individual days. For full details visit www.kent.ac.uk/sports/summerzone. Booking closes on Friday 26 July.

The University of Kent Players are proud to present Gail Young’s ‘Bothered & Bewildered’ this September.

The play will be performed at 7.30 on the 5-7 September at the Gulbenkian Theatre, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NB.

Tickets are now on sale via the Gulbenkian website, in person at the Gulbenkian ticket office, or over the phone 01227 769075.

Bothered & Bewildered is a comic drama that follows Irene and her two daughters Louise and Beth as they begin a long journey in which the girls lose their mum in spirit but not in body. As her family struggle to come to terms with her Alzheimer’s, Irene’s past passion for romantic fiction blurs with reality. She discusses with her unseen and witty companion Barbara Cartland (Irene’s favourite and now deceased world famous romantic novelist) how best to write her ‘memory book’, disclosing to Barbara long kept family secrets that she would never reveal to anyone else.