Applications are now open for the Kent Summer School in Critical Theory (KSSCT) offering early career researchers and doctoral students from across all disciplines a unique opportunity to work intensively and collaboratively with a leading critical scholar.

The two-week summer school, organised by Kent Law School’s Centre for Critical Thought (CCT),will be held at the University of Kent’s centre in Paris from Monday 1 – Friday 12 July. Seminars will be led by Professor Alain Pottage (London School of Economics) and Professor Sigrid Wiegel (Research Institute for Literature and Culture, Berlin)

Successful applicants will work closely with one of the seminar teachers for the duration of the school but can also enjoy lectures delivered by both Professor Pottage, Professor Wiegel and invited guests. Throughout their stay, applicants will have opportunities to make the most of the Summer School’s location at Reid Hall in Montparnasse.

The fee for this year’s KSSCT is £950. This amount covers seminar tuition and several lunch and drink receptions. Attendees will cover their own travel, accommodation and subsistence fees. Limited financial assistance will be available in the form of scholarships for a small number of excellent applicants who would otherwise not be able to attend. The first deadline for application is Sunday 10 February 2019. Outstanding applicants who apply by this date will be notified in mid February, to enable early travel and accommodation bookings. The second deadline is Sunday 3 March 2019. All successful applicants will be notified by Monday 11 March 2019.​

The KSSCT seminar programme is preceded by a Graduate Research Day, in Paris on 29 June which all Summer School applicants are encouraged to consider participating (additional cost £50).

Further details of both events, including seminar outlines and an indicative reading list, are available on the KSSCT website.

Are you interested in learning and development?

Would you like to be the first to know about new and exciting opportunities?

Could you help us spread the word to your colleagues and friends?

We are keen to engage Champions from areas across the organisation who have a passion for development and would like to help launch and embed these new development activities within their teams, departments and across the organisation.

If that sounds like you, please read our blog for more information

A new crowdfunding project at Kent has just been launched to create a play accessible for people who are deaf/hard of hearing or visually impaired and take it to Edinburgh.

Kasia Senyszyn who is supported by the Alumni Postgraduate Research Scholarship funded by alumni donations, is researching how to make theatre more accessible for people with hearing or sight loss, and is using her research to embed captioning and audio description techniques into a show.

The project, ‘Talk on Tour’, includes adapting the script with the playwright and working with access practitioners and deaf/hard of hearing and visually impaired members of the local community to develop the accessible strategies. Kasia and her team will then produce and rehearse the show and take it to Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2019.

Kasia comments: ‘By taking the show to Edinburgh, we can hopefully inspire other theatre makers and theatre lovers to think more creatively about access. It doesn’t have to be a last-minute add-on that disrupts the experience of the show – techniques can be integrated into the performance so that everyone can have an equal opportunity to enjoy it.’

There are 11 million people in the UK that have hearing or sight loss. Studies have shown that 80% suffer from anxiety, isolation or depression due to exclusion from social or cultural activities. This project aims to change that by producing an accessible production and presenting it at one of the biggest theatrical festivals in the world, in the hopes that accessibility will become more mainstream

You can support the project by donating via the crowdfunding platform, or following Kasia’s theatre company social media to find out about upcoming events; there will be a public quiz and raffle on Tuesday 5 March at the Parrot pub in Canterbury from 20.00.

Research by Dr Shaun May, Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre in the School of Arts, was recently used fed into a podcast series entitled 1800 Seconds on Autism.

1800 Seconds on Autism is hosted by Robyn Steward and Jamie Knight, and covers subjects such as home, family, humour and ‘geekiness’. The episode features stand-up comedian and poet Kate Fox, and begins with: ‘There’s this rumour going around that autistic people don’t laugh, don’t get comedy, and don’t have a sense of humour’. The hosts  then dissect well-known jokes such as ‘why did the chicken cross the road?’

The programme references Shaun mid-way through, with presenter Robyn Stewart quoting him: ‘Autistic people find slapstick humour and word play enjoyable in terms of humour’, and using this as a starting point for discussion.

Shaun was also interviewed on the same topic by BBC News, in an article entitled ‘Do Autistic People ‘Get’ Jokes?’ You can read the article on the BBC website.

Shaun is also organising the Autism Arts Festival which will take place at the University of Kent from Friday 26 April to Sunday 28 April 2019.

The 1800 Seconds on Autism podcast  can be heard on the BBC website.

Dr Oliver Double, Reader in Drama, along with two graduates from the School of Arts, will be launching a new regular comedy night, Funny Rabbit, at Gulbenkian this month, with the first show on Friday 8 February 2019.

Funny Rabbit is a new kind of comedy club – radical and exciting, but also warm and snuggly as a bunny rabbit. The format of the show will be a line-up of two professional comedians, with two students from the School of Arts, compered by Olly. Whether you’ve never seen live comedy before or you’ve been watching it for decades, Funny Rabbit is for you.

The opening night will feature Bobby Mair and Drama alumnus Tiernan Douieb. Bobby Mair is a regular face from TV featuring in such shows as Comedy Central, 8 out of 10 Cats (C4), Never Mind the Buzzcocks (BBC2), Virtually Famous (E4), Sweat the Small Stuff (BBC3), World of Weird(C4) and Safe Word (ITV). Tiernan Douieb is the writer and star of hit podcast Partly Political Broadcast, the man behind Comedy Club 4 Kids, and has appeared in Channel 4’s Fresh Meat. He completed a BA (Hon) in Drama at Kent in 2003.

Also performing will be Alf White and Lauren Carroll, both on the BA (Hons) in Drama and Theatre.

The show is co-organised by Thomas Blake who completed a BA (Hons) in Drama and Theatre and an MA in Creative Producing, and Matt Hoss, who completed a BA (Hons) degree in Classical & Archaeological Studies and Drama and an MA in Stand-Up Comedy.

The show starts at 19.30 and tickets cost £5/£8. For more information, please see Gulbenkian webpages.

The University’s corporate membership of the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, means that staff can access some great discounted deals for shows this spring and summer.

Special members’ offers include:

• Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake: Tuesday 26 to Saturday 30 March – 15% off Tuesday-Thursday
• Benidorm Live: Monday 15 to Saturday 20 April – 15% off Monday-Thursday
• Blood Brothers: Tuesday 27 to  Saturday 31 August – 15% off Tuesday-Thursday evenings
• Motown the Musical: Tuesday 3 to Saturday 14 September – 15% off Monday-Thursday

Full details of Member Discounts are available here.

The Marlowe also offers a number of special Members’ Evenings, including a discounted top ticket and post-show drink with cast members.

For 2019/20, these include:

• War Horse  – Wednesday 27 February 2019
• The Bodyguard – Tuesday 14 May 2019
• We Will Rock You – Monday 24 February 2020

Full details of upcoming Members Evenings are available here.

To obtain your discounted tickets, you no longer need to use a special booking code. Instead, the first time you book using the new system, visit the Marlowe website and:

1. Go to My Account (it’s under the person icon, top right of the website) or set up an account if you don’t have one yet
2. Under the ‘Company Name’ option, choose the name of your employer

You will automatically be registered as a Business Membership staff member and every time you log into the website to book tickets, your discount will be applied in the basket.

Enjoy the shows!

Is there a core set of experiences all undergraduate students should have in an increasingly diverse university?  If so, what would those be?

Those were the central questions that prompted the development of a Framework for Powerful Student Experiences at the University of Kent.

An extensive consultation, with input from more than 1,770 students and over 60 staff, has resulted in a framework of six principles outlining what all undergraduate students should experience during their learning journey at Kent:

1. Learning that is relevant to their goals, interests, and ambitions.
2. Practice with and feedback on intellectual skills and active engagement with key ideas.
3. A challenging, supportive, inclusive environment.
4. Interactions with diverse peers that support them in learning about their subject, becoming familiar with other cultures, appreciating different points of view, and developing communication skills.
5. Meaningful interactions with academics, staff or mentors.
6. At least one “high impact” practice that integrates Principles 1-5, such as a work experience, independent project, public exhibition/performance, study abroad, or series of interactive seminars.

The full report provides suggestions for action for each principle addressing both curricular and co-curricular experiences. The 2018 Learning and Teaching Conference featured examples of these principles in action, as will the 2019 Learning and Teaching Conference.

Commenting on the report, Professor April McMahon, Deputy Vice-Chancellor – Education said: ‘I urge colleagues at Kent to engage with this ground-breaking research, which helps us understand the improvements we can all make to help students value their university experience.’

The framework will also be communicated to students, helping them to make the most of their time at the University.

Thank you to all who gave input during the consultation period.

In the latest episode of the Nostalgia podcast series, Dr Chris Deacy, Reader in Theology and Religious Studies in the Department of Religious Studies, interviews Dr William Price.

William taught Chris when he was an undergraduate at the then-University of Wales, Lampeter – now University of Wales Trinity Saint David – in the early 1990s. In this insightful interview, the pair talk about what attracted William to Lampeter when he started working there in 1970; what it is about Lampeter that is unique; what his earliest memories are; the influences in his youth of piano music; ‘Dan Dare’ and railways; studying History in Oxford at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis; why Austin Farrer is his biggest hero; ‘riding two horses’ in the sense of holding both academic and clerical professions; and why he has no regrets about the choices he has made in his life.

After the announcement today that the UK Government is opening its redress scheme for those sent overseas as part of the UK child migration programmes, Professor Gordon Lynch, Michael Ramsey Professor of Modern Theology in the Department of Religious Studies and an expert on such schemes, comments on the ‘symbolic gesture’, but adds more needs to be done by the voluntary organisations.

‘Following the recommendation of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) to establish such a scheme, in recognition of the Government’s systemic failures to protect children sent overseas through these programmes, payments of £20,000 are to be made to any former child migrant still alive when the Inquiry made this recommendation on 1^st March 2018.

‘The redress scheme inevitably raises complex questions about what it means to offer some restitution for historic abuse. The amount of £20,000 is intended as a symbolic gesture of remorse, and is clearly not equivalent to the level of compensation that might be expected for the forms of lasting physical and psychological harm to which many former child migrants were exposed.

‘Some have received other redress payments, depending on the organisations and Australian State to which they were sent, or through individual claims to organisations which sent them. More than two hundred former child migrants sent to the Fairbridge Molong Farm School have also been able, after a long court battle, to win the largest class action in Australian legal history for historic institutional abuse for their treatment at that institution.

‘But financial recompense for former child migrants remains an arbitrary patchwork, in which there are no guarantees that individuals who have experienced significant physical and sexual abuse – or had their lives shaped by the poor education offered by overseas institutions – will be properly compensated.

‘There are doubtless lessons to be learned from our country’s treatment of former child migrants. A substantial body of material relating to the abuse of former child migrants was first presented to the UK Government in 1998 through a report produced by the House of Commons Health Committee.

‘To have waited a further 20 years before these were considered by a fuller public inquiry – by which time many former child migrants had died – must surely encourage us to respond in a more timely way to other such cases in the future. Whilst the IICSA process has led to the establishment of a Government redress scheme, questions remain about the responsibilities of many voluntary organisations involved in this work to also provide some form of restitution.

‘Although some have made individual compensation payments – often of limited amounts – their systemic failures have not led to them either setting up their own redress schemes or apparently contributing to this Government initiative. Too often voluntary organisations – including religious bodies – have offered expressions of regret when the spotlight of a public inquiry is on them, but with little action taken by them after this.

‘Providing restitution for historic abuse is always imperfect, always incomplete. Financial compensation should rightly play a part in this, but should also be part of larger responses including public apologies (which genuinely shape future organisational attitudes), personal support to survivors, and a greater willingness on the past of organisations involved to allow critical scrutiny of their work and to reform their organisational cultures where needed. Whether former British child migrants will be satisfied with today’s announcement about redress, the process of offering restitution for their suffering is on-going.’

Gordon Lynch, Michael Ramsey Professor of Modern Theology in the School of European Culture and Languages, was an advisor to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), and co-authored a report into child sexual abuse in child migration schemes for the Inquiry.