Come and join us in the Student Hub on Wednesday 27 February from 13:00 – 14:30 for the next Medway Global Hangout of the series.

The theme will be a celebration of ‘Love’ and the event is open to ALL Medway students. Book your FREE tickets.

For more information about our termly Global Hangout events, visit our website.

We look forward to seeing you there!

International Partnerships. Email: internationalevents@kent.ac.uk

The Centre for Professional Practice will host a presentation on Understanding and Working with Self-harm and Attempted Suicide at Canterbury campus on Monday 25 March from 9.30-11.30.

The presentation, by Dr Terence Nice, Programme Director (Psychotherapy), at the Centre for Professional Practice, focuses on the assessment and treatment of people who self-harm and attempt suicide.

The presentation looks at the prevalence of self-harm, national guidelines, causative factors and ways of ameliorating suicidal ideations and diminishing acts of self-harm. The territory of self-harm and attempted suicide is often paradoxical and labyrinthine, leaving clinicians, practitioners and workers uncertain about how to react positively and respond appropriately.

The presentation is aimed at all those people who come into contact with young or older people who self-harm or attempt suicide.  The presenter is a Lecturer in Psychological Therapies, Highly Specialist Psychotherapist and an active researcher in this field. Dr Nice has also developed a self-harm tool-kit to assist in the assessment and treatment of this group. The presentation will be followed by Q&A time. Refreshments will be provided and certificates of attendance will be issued.

Venue: University of Kent Canterbury campus, Grimond Lecture Theatre 2, Canterbury CT2 7NZ.

Fee: The event has a charge of £20.

All spaces must be pre-booked online.

For any queries, please email professionalpractice@kent.ac.uk or call 01634 888929.

The course is delivered by the Centre for Professional Practice (CPP). Our part-time, flexible Masters in Professional Practice programme, starting in October 2019, offers you an opportunity to attain academic recognition for the skills, knowledge and experience you have developed in the work place.

Learn more about the Centre for Professional Practice.

T: 01634 888929

Worldfest celebrations are taking place all week across the Canterbury and Medway campuses from 18-23 March 2019.

Worldfest is a vibrant, exciting celebration of culture across the University of Kent!

Events include; International Food Fayre & Mini Market, Fitness Fest, African Drumming, HOLI Festival, Bollywood Brass Band, Diversity Fair and much more!

See the webpages for the full programme of events and activities.

The Learning and Organisational Development Team will be running a seminar on HRT and The Menopause on Friday 8 March 2019 in the Rochester Board room, Rochester Building, Medway campus starting at 09.30 until 11.15.

This important seminar will provide information, advice and guidance on the Menopause, how it affects women and the impact of this from a work perspective.

This seminar will be delivered in two parts:

Part 1 a presentation by Anita Ralph MSc (Herbal Medicine), MNIMH MCPP, who will share and open for discussion holistic medical approaches in treating the symptoms of The Menopause.

Part 2 of the seminar will be a presentation by Miss Anne Henderson – Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, who will share information and discuss The Menopause and Prescription HRT, medications etc.

This seminar is open to everyone (this includes men). The menopause is something that affects not only those who are going through it but also colleagues, managers and others who are there to support people who are going through it.

If you are interested in attending, please book a place via Staff Connect.

The Tonbridge Centre’s popular programme of short courses is well underway for this term. The courses are designed to be studied for personal interest or self-development, among like-minded people from all walks of life and without formal assessment.

Courses for the Spring term continue in topics as diverse as French Painting and Culture: Realism to Impressionism; Travellers in the Greek and Roman Worlds; The Music of Spain; Modern Canadian Literature; Van Dyck and the Court of Charles l; Writing for self-care​. Additionally, a free short talk presenting the survey findings from Kent research ‘Prejudice in the Age of Brexit’ is also available at the Tonbridge Centre.

See full details of the whole programme online.  A staff discount is available on some courses: please contact the Tonbridge Centre by email tonbridgeamin@kent.ac.uk or by calling extension 4990 for further information.

If you’re planning to travel on University business, don’t forget that we now have a new travel provider and a new policy.

All business travel – whether by plane, train or car – should now be booked with Key Travel. If you need help, contact your school/department finance administrator or email the Procurement team in Finance – procurement@kent.ac.uk

The University also has a new Travel Policy, which includes guidance on booking travel, assessing and managing travel risk, the use of rail, taxis and flights, and Uber, AirBnB and Booking.com.

Heidi Colthup, lecturer for the Department of English Language & Linguistics, has published an article exploring the narrative conventions of walking simulators – a new video game genre where there are no winners, and no one is shot at or killed.

Walking Simulators have become increasingly popular in the last few years. They are ‘games’ that do not require participants to have gaming skills; instead they simply walk around a landscape and interact with items they find, resembling a cross between playing a game and reading a book with different potential outcomes. Popular titles include Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, Firewatch, What Remains of Edith Finch, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and Dear Esther.

Video games like Dear Esther encourage players to actively identify themselves as the main story protagonist, and it is the use of second person address (‘you’) that drives this identification. In Dear Esther, the player is a man whose wife recently died who walks around a Hebridean island reflecting on the past, with flashbacks, that gradually reveal the true intention of his journey.

To understand how these games are changing the genre of gaming and creating a new form of storytelling that places the player at the heart of the action, Heidi investigated the use of the word ‘you’ within Dear Esther, and how this affects a player’s response to the story.

Heidi found that the use of the word ‘you’ within the narrative contributes to the instability of the story so it is more difficult to work it out because we’re used to observing characters in books, but video games make us the character, and Dear Esther‘s complex narrative makes us both observer and player. It therefore engages the player more than a traditional video game, and as such is more like reading a literary novel – making a new literary genre.

She said that while there had been recent hype over the ability for viewers to choose their own story, such as in in Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch episode, this type of cross-format art form has been growing in popularity within the gaming world.

She said: ‘Walking simulators have great stories that are akin to reading a book, matched with fantastic graphics and music like video games, making it a fantastic way to tell a story and in essence creating a new art form. Examining how the games are devised to bring ‘you’ in explains why the experience is more intense than reading a book and stays with the player for longer afterwards.’

‘You Were all the World Like a Beach to me’. The Use of Second Person Address to Create Multiple Storyworlds in Literary Video Games: ‘Dear Esther’, a Case Study by Heidi Colthup, appears in the International Journal of Transmedia Literacy.

Thanks to all those of you who have emailed our feedback mailbox (feedback@kent.ac.uk) following the Vice-Chancellor’s email of 6 February 2019.

As you know, the email covered a number of challenges facing the University and proposals that Executive Group are bringing forward in order to make sure we are able to meet these challenges and build for a successful future.

We are currently working on more information and frequently asked questions for both staff and students and hope to have more for you later this week. Your feedback so far has already helped us to prepare that information.

In the meantime, please do continue to send us your questions, suggestions and ideas and we will do our best to ensure your comment/query is answered as soon as possible.

Corporate Communications on behalf of Executive Group

Colleagues are invited to attend the Learning & Teaching Network session on Wednesday 6 March, from 13.15-14.30 in the UELT Seminar Room, Canterbury.

‘Specific Learning Differences- what are they and how can they be identified’ will be presented Veronica Millum, Specific Learning Difficulties Team Manager, Student Support and Wellbeing.

If you have ever wondered what the difference is between a student with an assessment for dyslexia and a student with an assessment for dyspraxia, this is for you.

The presentation will look at how we determine if a student needs to be referred for an assessment, what the assessor considers when identifying a SpLD; the differences between the main SpLD’s and how different aspects of learning difference result in the various identifiers. It will also consider how these difficulties impact on the individual student’s experience in lectures and seminars.

It will also consider some of the strategies that can be integrated into teaching to make it more inclusive for all students.

To confirm your attendance please complete the online booking form.

Colleagues are invited to attend the CSHE Seminar taking place on Thursday 7 March 2019, from 16.00-17.00.  The speaker, Michelle Grue from Girvetz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will be live streamed to the UELT Seminar Room in Canterbury and M1-16 in Medway.

The call for diversifying academic curriculum has been sounding on both sides of the Atlantic and scholars are heeding it. Yet, the reality remains that the majority of faculty members in both the United States and United Kingdom are white and trained in traditional, Western academic canons. For academics who want to diversify the curriculum, determining how to actually do so can be challenging. Michelle Grue will explain the perspectives, questions, and methods that framed a collaborative research project on which she and her colleagues examined the degree requirements and course offerings in the top-50 Ph.D. granting sociology departments in the US.  She will also briefly summarise and discuss the findings. With these frameworks and methods in hand, attendees should be equipped to begin a similar examination of their own program’s course offerings and canon.

To confirm your attendance please complete the online booking form.