Kent’s international partner in the GCRF COMPASS Project, ADA University (Azerbajan) has organised a high-profile talk on ‘Brexit: What’s happened and does what does the future hold’ by Professor Anand Menon.  The lecture is taking place online at 12.30 – 13.30 on Thursday 22 April and is open to all academic staff and researchers.  For access to the online lecture please contact ceeus@ada.edu.az

The COMPASS project works with partners in Cambridge, Belarusian State University (BSU), Tajik National University (TNU) and the University of World Economy and Diplomacy (UWED) in Uzbekistan to connect research, policy and people globally.  The COMPASS project seeks to establish ‘regional hubs of excellence’ at the top-level HEIs in Eastern Neighbourhood and Central Asia to enable them to become our lead research partners and ‘nodes of excellence’ for knowledge production and transfer across the region and beyond.

See the COMPASS website for more information about the project and its partners.

Guest lecturer

Anand Menon is Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at King’s College London.  He also directs the UK in a Changing Europe project.  His areas of research interest include the policies and institutions of the European Union, European security and British politics.  He is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of the European Union (OUP, 2020) and co-author of Brexit and British Politics (Polity 2018). He is a trustee of Full Fact, a member of the Strategic Council of the European Policy Centre, a Council member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and an associate fellow of Chatham House.

Lecturer in US History, Dr Erik Mathisen, has been awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for his new research project, ‘Free Labour & Emancipation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic World’.

Dr Mathisen shares: ‘”Free Labour & Emancipation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic World” examines how ideas about free labour (selling our work for a wage) became wrapped up in struggles over the abolition of African slavery, the emancipation of enslaved peoples, and the chaotic expansion of capitalism in the nineteenth century.

‘Focused on the British Caribbean, the United States and Cuba, the project will chart the history of how the problems of emancipation exposed the contradictions of free labour, not only in places where slavery dominated, but in the lives of working people throughout the Atlantic World. As I hope this project will show, the age of emancipation was one in which freedom and coercion were shaped by the ideas and actions of a broad range of people: missionaries and political economists, but also enslaved people on plantations, day labourers, domestic servants, factory workers and more. Free labour is also intimately connected to a global race for empire and labour in the last decades of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This project ties these threads together, showing how the Age of Emancipation built the foundations of the Age of Empire.

‘It occurred to me that the precarity of work in so much of our economy now, as well as the terms of debate about how work is talked about in popular culture, makes a virtue of the freedom and flexibility to work but obscures the coercion that so many face. Students this year who are taking my Special Subject, “The Age of Emancipation,” have also played a huge part in the project. Spending time thinking through their questions each week has helped me enormously to clarify my own ideas. I hope that when it is finished, they will see some of their fingerprints on parts of the book too!’

The Talent and Organisational Development Team are happy to share a number of upcoming learning opportunities, that are bookable via your personal Staff Connect Dashboard.

In partnership with Canterbury Christ Church University, and facilitated by Planned Future, we will be offering two webinars as follow:

Pre-Retirement Financial planning: Wednesday 5 May 2021, 10.00 – 13.00.

A half day webinar aiming to give participants knowledgeable advice in regards to all aspects of planning for retirement, looking at areas such as finance, health and lifestyle.

Mid-Career Financial planning: Wednesday 5 May 2021, 14.00 – 16.00.

This short webinar covers a range of issues relevant to planning your financial affairs, both now and for the future.

As part of Mental Health Awareness Week 2021, we will be running the following session:

Mental Health training for Line Managers: Monday 10 May, 10.00 – 13.00.

The aim of the workshop is to enable and encourage managers to develop a management style that strikes the right balance between the needs of the individual/team and the needs of the business.

You can book all these webinars via Staff Connect and you will receive a Zoom invite a day or so before the webinar takes place.

If you would like any further information, please get in touch with the team: ldev@kent.ac.uk

From Professor Richard Reece | DVC Education and Student Experience

As many of you will be aware, the KentVision project team are currently working hard behind the scenes to get our new student data system up and running for next week. Launch preparations are going well, and a number of key stages in this process have already been completed. However, while we remain on track to have the system live next week, we now expect this to be slightly later in the week due to the need to confirm that everything is working as it should be before the system becomes fully operational again.

Where we are up to so far  

The initial data migration went well, and the team are currently going through the process of carefully validating key systems records to ensure that the new system is operating smoothly. This process is almost complete for areas including finance, assessments and PGR admin, with core student record admin also well on the way to being finalised.

What we still need to do  

All Student Support and UKVI data is being migrated at the moment, with the team working through the weekend to continue these final steps and carry out all necessary checks. Validating this will take some time, so we expect all critical work to be complete by Monday afternoon – the team will then need a couple of days to bring all of the systems back up before they are available to use. The only exception will be Student Notes and Academic Advisors, which we will now migrate shortly after the system is back live to avoid any further delay.

We will provide a further update for staff and students on Monday, when we expect to have further progress to report, along with confirmation of the expected launch date next week*. All key internal stakeholders have already been informed so they can update plans for next week and we have arrangements in place so we can continue with key admissions activity in the meantime.

I am sure you all appreciate the careful and detailed work needed to complete a data migration project of this scale, and so thank you all for your patience as we carry out these vital final steps.

With best wishes,

Richard

Professor Richard Reece | DVC Education and Student Experience

[UPDATE 21.04.21: KentVision now expected to go live on the afternoon of Friday 23 April 2021]

From Professor Richard Reece | DVC Education and Student Experience

On Tuesday, the Government confirmed that students in England will now only be able to return to universities for face-to-face teaching from 17 May at the earliest. This is disappointing news for all of us, and I have written to students today to update them and share our frustration at this further disruption to their studies. 

Latest Government proposals 

Under the latest guidance announced yesterday, students who are still off campus can only return for face-to-face teaching no earlier than 17 May, in line with the next phase of ending lockdown. As we are now moving into the exam term after the Easter break, our focus will therefore be on continuing to support students wherever they are based and ensuring we are doing everything we can to help them achieve the best possible outcome in their online exams from 10 May onwards. There is more information on support available for students on our Student Guide.   

The Government announced further details on asymptomatic testing requirements when students do return, plans to provide home-testing kits for students and an additional £15m in hardship funding to support those most in need. We are awaiting further details on what this means for us at Kent and will share more information as soon as possible. 

Kent Summer plans 

After what has been such a difficult year for everyone, we are determined to give our students a chance to come together to mark the end of the academic year. We are currently developing joint plans with our Students’ Unions to run a programme of activity throughout the summer term culminating in a two-week celebration at the end of June. We will provide further updates on this as soon as possible and I hope a number of you across the University will be able to help with shaping plans as they come together. 

Professor Richard Reece | DVC Education and Student Experience

From Simone Davies, Director of MORA 

I am delighted to welcome Chris Sleeman, Interim Head of Admissions, to MORA (Marketing, Outreach, Recruitment and Admissions).

Chris joins us from Regent’s University London, where he was Head of Admissions and held a variety of roles during his 10-year career at the institution. Prior to entering Higher Education, Chris worked in business development and business support/consultancy, building networks, and implementing process improvements.  Over the coming months, Chris’s focus will be on leading the team, post a review of admissions, to improve processes and services to benefit our applicants and the University.

I am sure you will join me in welcoming Chris to the University of Kent.

Simone Davies | Director of MORA

The University’s Research Excellence Team, in collaboration with KMTV, present ‘Next Generation Impact’, the first streamed impact series for all levels of academic and professional staff across our sector.

The series will tackle all aspects of the impact agenda, from engagement to working in partnership and funding impact activities. With panels of esteemed experts within the field, pertinent and provocative questions will be addressed as the ‘Next Generation’ of impact is considered in terms of expertise, maturation of research impacts, and how we move forward as a sector in facilitating and maximising impacts.

The first virtual event titled ‘Perspective on Impact will be taking place Monday 26 April between 12.00 – 13.00. Find out who will be on the live panel on the Next Generation webpage  and book your place via Eventbrite.

The team look forward to seeing you there!

Entries for the Times Higher Education Awards 2021 are now open.

Entries are invited from UK higher education institutions (and for the first time, in Ireland too) across 19 categories, which will be shortlisted and judged by an expert panel,  with this year’s categories listed below.

This year focuses primarily on the 2019-20 academic year, so that includes brilliant responses to the many unforeseen challenges brought by the Covid-19 pandemic, but the judges are aware that lots of work took place during that period that was unrelated to or unaffected by the pandemic, and are keen to read about those too.

• University of the Year
• Business School of the Year
• International Collaboration of the Year
• Knowledge Exchange/Transfer Initiative of the Year
• Most Innovative Teacher of the Year
• Outstanding Contribution to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
• Outstanding Contribution to the Local Community
• Outstanding Entrepreneurial University
• Outstanding Estates Team
• Outstanding Library Team
• Outstanding Marketing/Communications Team
• Outstanding Research Supervisor of the Year
• Outstanding Support for Students
• Outstanding Technician of the Year
• Research Project of the Year: Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
• Research Project of the Year: STEM
• Technological or Digital Innovation of the Year
• Widening Participation or Outreach Initiative of the Year
• THE Outstanding Achievement Award

Winners will be announced at a glittering hopefully in-person ceremony in late November.

Corporate Communications will once again be co-ordinating Kent’s award entries this year and is happy to support schools/departments with their submissions. Please email Corporate Communications by Friday 21 May if you know of a potential entry – deadline for all completed entries is Wednesday 9 June.

Further information on the awards is available on the THE Awards 2021 website.

Picture shows: Murray Smith, Professor of Film at the School of Arts, who was shortlisted for Outstanding Research Supervisor of the Year at the THE Awards 2020.