Law School ranked amongst top 100 law schools worldwide in Shanghai Ranking

It’s the second consecutive year the Kent Law School has been featured in the prestigious global league table (published this week). A total of 200 law schools are selected for the table based on the strength of their research publication output over a four-year period. Kent is one of only 12 UK law schools to be listed in the top 100.

Kent Law School has an excellent global reputation for law – it is ranked 50th in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2018 and are among the top 150 law schools in the QS World University Rankings 2017.

The Law School also has an international reputation for producing world-leading research. In the most recent Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014, Kent Law School was ranked eighth in the UK for research intensity. Almost all (99%) of the School’s research was judged to be of international quality with 79% judged as ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’.

Kent is also a leading UK law school, ranked 13th in The Guardian University Guide 2019 for law, 14th in The Times Good University Guide 2018 and 18th in The Complete University Guide 2019.

Paul March-Russell on Trump’s Space Force

Dr Paul March-Russell, Specialist Associate Lecturer in the Department of Comparative Literature and editor of Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, has contributed an article to The Conversation on US President Donald Trump’s plans for a ‘Space Force’ from a science-fiction perspective, published today 16 August 2018.

The Conversation is an independent website consisting of news and views sourced from the academic and research community, and delivered direct to the public.

‘The rhetoric of both Pence and Trump, referring respectively to “the boundless expanse of space” and the necessity for “American dominance”, is inherently science-fictional, but of a particularly American kind,’ explains Paul in the article, who places the language and ideas in the context of the traditions of American science fiction.

Comparing Trump’s Space Force plants to Reagan’s earlier Strategic Defence Initiative in the 1980s, which became known as ‘Star Wars’, Paul concludes ‘what we can deduce from the proposal is that we are firmly in the logic of the reboot, that much loved tactic of longrunning movie franchises.’

Read the full article here.

Call for conference session proposals on Roman archaeology

The Department of Classical & Archaeological Studies at Kent is delighted to be hosting the Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference (TRAC) next year, 11-14 April 2019.

TRAC is an unincorporated voluntary association that has developed from and around the annual series of conferences held since 1991. The first TRAC was held in 1991 to widen the range of perspectives offered, and voices heard, in Roman Archaeology.

The TRAC 2019 Local Organising Committee includes PhD student Philip Smither (Chair), PhD student and Graduate Teaching Assistant Karl Goodwin (Vice-Chair), PhD student Sophie Chavarria, as well as Dr Jo Stoner, Research Associate, and Dr David Walsh, Lecturer in Classical & Archaeological Studies.

The committee are inviting proposals for conference sessions, which will include between 4 and 6 papers, each around 20 minutes, with 10 minutes for questions.

The conference will run three regular parallel sessions alongside an ‘unconference’ of more informal discussion groups. More information on, and ideas for, ‘unconference’ sessions can be found here. If you would like to propose a topic for one of the unconference sessions, please specify this in your proposal. TRAC welcome ideas for sessions outside the traditional presentation format including workshops focused on particular themes and/or theories.

The deadline for the submission of session proposals is Sunday 2 September 2018. Submissions should be sent by email to: trac2019@kent.ac.uk

For further details about call for sessions, please see the TRAC page here.

Nostalgia podcast with Silvia Rasca

The latest episode of podcast series on ‘Nostalgia’, hosted by Dr Chris Deacy, Reader in Theology and Religious Studies in the Department of Religious Studies, has just been released.

In this week’s interview, Chris interviews a member of professional services staff at the University of Kent, Silvia Rasca.

Silvia has recently joined Kent as Assistant Project Manager for the Integrating Student Frontline Services Project. In this fascinating interview, Silvia talks about her journey to Canterbury from Romania and the political turmoil in her native country in the late 1980s, when she was born, and the impact it had on her and her family in the years that followed. Silvia reflects on how she has applied the goals and values instilled in her by her family to her new home, where Silvia discusses the importance of challenging and pushing barriers.

Silvia talks about keeping a diary and she explains why she tries not to have any regrets in life. Her grandparents are a particular inspiration for her, and Silvia tells us the secret of why her grandparents’ chickens had to be spoken to in Hungarian. Her father was a professional volleyball player and Silvia talks about how she used to accompany him to matches. We learn about the type of music that her parents disapproved of her listening to, and she confesses to once having taped over her father’s beloved Pink Floyd cassette tape with Aqua’s ‘Barbie Girl’.

Silvia talks about the role that production and scriptwriting played in her degree and why she enjoyed standing in front of a class as it exposed herself to vulnerable situations which enabled her to ‘rise to the occasion’.

The interview concludes with some candid reflections on the role of activism in her native Romania and we learn whether Silvia is a looking back or a looking forward type of person.

The podcast is available here:
https://audioboom.com/posts/6960671-silvia-rasca

Participants needed!

Researchers in the Psychology department are running a large-scale project looking at Social Communication Across the Lifespan; we are currently looking for our last few participants, particularly aged 26-49 years (the study has recruited participants aged 10-90+, and we have had a great response from these age groups, so are looking specifically for these ‘working age group’ participants).

The study involves two testing sessions of 2- 2.5 hours, where you would be asked to complete a series of computer-based tasks. You would be paid £30 cash, and we can schedule testing around your availability (including evenings and weekends).

Due to the nature of the tasks, participants must be native English-speakers, have normal vision (or correct-to-normal, e.g., with glasses or contact lenses), no learning disabilities, no current mental health diagnosis, and no diagnosis of autism, epilepsy, dementia, or history of stroke.

If you are interested and would like to find out more, please email us at: CogSoCoAGE@kent.ac.uk and we will send you more information about taking part in this study!

Nostalgia podcast with Alan Le Grys

Dr Chris Deacy, Reader in Theology and Religious Studies in the Department of Religious Studies, has released another instalment of his podcast series on ‘Nostalgia’ interviewing the Reverend Dr Alan Le Grys, who taught as Specialist Associate Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies.

In a very candid interview, Alan talks about growing up in the South London suburbs on the edge of the largest council estate in the UK in a house that, when he was young, was thought might be haunted, and where he felt the presence of his deceased grandparents. Alan reflects on how, at school, he was the last child to be picked in football, but has in later years embraced running. He has, for example, run the London Marathon for charity. Alan also talks about the ritual of ‘dressing the part’, and offers the aphorism that one needs to ‘Make something routine so that it becomes so much part of your rhythm that you are freed to enter into it.’

Alan discusses the role that music has played in his life, principally in the form of ‘Bach, Beethoven and the Beatles’, and we learn which of the Beatles’ eras he considers to be ‘headache music’, and why. He also talks about why he returned to playing the piano in later years to Grade 5 standard, and how he has also recently accumulated around 10 hours of flying experience as a student pilot.

Despite having three degrees from King’s College London, Alan doesn’t see himself as an academic (leading to a riveting conversation around the theme of ‘imposter’ and ‘fraud’ syndrome) and had never considered either ordination or even going to university until it was suggested to him by his school teachers.

Alan talks movingly about the death of his father, and how his ‘world totally collapsed’, which happened while he was in the midst of writing an essay during his undergraduate degree on the Resurrection, and which he refers to as a ‘deep, formative experience’. Then, in the final part of the interview, we discuss the art of competitiveness and whether it is the process or the end goal that matters, and the way in which he believes the past can be thought of as being reframed by the future.

The podcast is available here.

An exhilarating evening of musical classics with Sir Thomas Allen

One of the leading British Baritones of the 20th century, Sir Thomas Allen, will be performing works from a recently recorded CD including composers such as George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Jerome Kern. Taking place on Friday 21 September at 7.30pm, this is an evening not to be missed!

Sir Thomas Allen is an established star of the great opera houses of the world. At the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where in 2011 he celebrated the 40th anniversary of his debut with the company, he has sung over fifty roles. The same year he also celebrated the 30th anniversary of his debut at the Metropolitan Opera, New York. He returns to the Metropolitan Opera in 17/18 for his acclaimed portrayal of Baron Zeta (The Merry Widow).

In addition to his dizzying list of performances in iconic roles in his 40+ year career, Allen has shot into 2018 off 2017 opera appearances that include Music Master (Ariadne auf Naxos) at Glyndebourne Festival Opera and Roc in The Exterminating Angel (Thomas Adés) at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

An Evening with Sir Thomas Allen will be held in the Colyer-Fergusson Hall at Gulbenkian on Friday 21 September. Tickets: Full £15 / Student £10. For more information and tickets please visit the Gulbenkian website or call 01227 769075.

The University is a disability confident committed employer

Learning & Organisational Development are pleased to announce that the University has achieved Level 1 of the Disability Confident Grading Scheme and we are now accredited with ‘Disability Confident Committed’.

Through Disability Confident, we will work to ensure that disabled people and those with long-term health conditions have the opportunities to fulfil their potential and realise their aspirations. Recognition of this scheme will help us to recruit and retain from the widest possible pool of talent and help develop our valuable skills and experience.

As a Level 1 Disability Confident Committed Employer we have committed to:

ensuring our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible
communicating and promoting vacancies
offering an interview to disabled people who meet the essential criteria
anticipating and providing reasonable adjustments as required
supporting any exiting employee who acquires a disability or long-term health condition, enabling them to stay in work
arranging activities that will make a difference for disabled people.

The Certification (pictured) is valid for 12 months and we can now display the Disability Confident Committed badge on University stationery, correspondence and websites.

Please review where and how you can use this badge within your own processes.

Our work will not stop here.

To demonstrate our continued commitment, during the next 12 months we will review the criteria that is required for us to attain the level 2 certification to become a Disability Confident Employer. We will create an action plan and will work across the University with different departments and the EDI staff networks with the aim to achieve the next level of certification.

British Sign Language Courses

The Centre for English and World Languages is delighted to be offering 20-week courses in British Sign Language starting in October 2018.

The course is run by Palm Deaf BSL Training and will allow participants to achieve a Level 1 Award which is accredited by Signature (the awarding body for BSL qualifications).

Due to popular demand, we are now running two groups:

13:00-16:00
17:00-20:00

For more information please visit the CEWL website.

Alternatively, if you have any questions, please email cewl@kent.ac.uk

Crowd funding a success!

A new Crowdfunding platform set up by the Development Office to support student projects at Kent has successfully raised thousands to build an environmentally sustainable round wooden timber-framed building – using materials taken from the University’s own coppiced woodland.

This exciting project to create a teaching, learning, and social space set within an ethnobotanical garden was launched at the School of Architecture End of Year Show and quickly took off.

‘We raised well over the £3,000 target in a matter of weeks and thanks to generous match-funding this ambitious and ground-breaking project will enter the building phase at the start of next term,’ said Alex Perkins from the Development Office.

There will now be a further launch to coincide with Freshers Week and the Development Office will be working with Kent Union to choose student-led projects to fund raise through the platform.