Tag Archives: Canterbury

Sports Ready Clinic

Did you know ALL Kent staff and students can get Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation treatments for ONLY £10!?

The Sports Ready Clinic based in Medway Park is a student run clinic offering assessments, treatments, rehabilitation and injury prevention to ALL University of Kent staff and students and offer 50% DISCOUNT. And School of Sport and Exercise Sciences get access for FREE!

So whether you’re suffering with an annoying everyday niggle, struggling to start or progress your training or wanting to prevent injuries get in touch, were here to help.

 To book an appointment, please contact sportinjury@kent.ac.uk and we can get you booked in!

 To keep up to date with the latest events and offers, follow @SRCKent on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, or visit our website for more information.

 

Inaugural hearing of the Airspace Tribunal in London

Kent Law School Professor Nick Grief will be sharing his expertise in international airspace law and human rights at the inaugural hearing of the Airspace Tribunal in London.

The Airspace Tribunal is an innovative research collaboration between Professor Grief https://www.kent.ac.uk/law/people/academic/Grief,_Nick.html and visual artist Shona Illingworth https://www.kent.ac.uk/smfa/staff/staff-profiles/fineart/3Illingworth.html (Reader in Fine Art at Kent’s School of Music and Fine Art). Its aim is to consider a new human right to protect peoples’ freedom to exist without physical or psychological threat from above.

The Airspace Tribunal is inviting representations from experts across a broad range of disciplines and lived experience, such as human rights, contemporary warfare, new media, environmental change, neuropsychology, conflict and forced migration. Together with Professor Grief and Shona Illingworth, speakers will include: Martin A Conway, cognitive neuropsychologist and expert on human memory and the law; Conor Gearty, professor of human rights law who has published extensively on terrorism, civil liberties and human rights; Andrew Hoskins, media sociologist known for his work on media, memory and conflict; Maya Mamish, psychologist researching integration and well-being of Syrian youth affected by armed conflict and displacement; and William Merrin, a specialist in digital media and author of Digital War.

The Tribunal’s inaugural hearing in September will also see the launch of Topologies of Air, a body of work by Shona Illingworth (commissioned by The Wapping Project) that features an immersive, multi-screen sound and video installation examining the impact of accelerating geopolitical, technological and environmental change on the composition, nature and use of airspace.

The event, supported by the University of Kent, The Wapping Project and Doughty Street Chambers, will be held at Doughty Street Chambers in Doughty Street from 10am – 4.30pm on Friday 21 September. Anybody interested in attending is asked to register online via the Eventbrite page (places are very limited).

Continued success for Kent’s European Summer Schools

The University’s 2018 European Summer Schools, at its postgraduate centres in Paris and Brussels, have reported another successful year.

Launched in 2013, the two-week summer school programme is built on Kent’s specialist knowledge and international reputation as the UK’s European university by offering a number of undergraduate students and external applicants the opportunity to participate in academic sessions and cultural activities in these two world-renowned European capitals.

This year, students at the University’s Brussels School of International Studies (BSIS) explored the theme of ‘Europe and the World’, which drew upon the academic strengths of the school. Within this context, various sub-themes were also covered; these included migration and the refugee response, the European Union’s (EU) relationship with emerging powers, and its response to the global economic crisis. Students participated in a series of guest lectures, seminars and debates delivered by academics, policy-makers, diplomats and European civil servants.

 Students at Kent’s Paris School of Arts and Culture, located in historic Montparnasse, explored the theme of ‘Revolutions’. This allowed them to gain a greater understanding of how French culture has long been at the centre of innovation in the fields of architecture, film, literature, art and philosophy

 Students spent two weeks in Paris in an interdisciplinary environment, attending seminars given by expert academics from Kent and visiting important sites and museums related to the programme. These included the Pompidou Centre, the Picasso Museum and the Jardin des Plantes.

Sophie Punt, Summer School Co-ordinator at the University, described this year as ‘one of the best to date with more students than ever before signing up’. It was successful in many respects she said but ‘overall this year’s schools have provided students with not only enhanced intercultural and analytical skills, but also provided them with an opportunity to see Europe and its role in the world from a range of different perspectives’. Looking ahead we are hoping to run a summer school at our Rome centre for 2019 which will draw on the expertise in Arts and History-based studies in the eternal city.

We would like to extend our thanks to the generous supporters of the schools including the Student Projects Fund for their generous contribution towards the scholarships.

 

 

New open access publication on mechanisms in medicine

 Jon Williamson, Professor of Reasoning, Inference and Scientific Method, and Dr Michael Wilde, Lecturer in Philosophy, both from the Department of Philosophy, have contributed to the book Evaluating Evidence of Mechanisms in Medicine (Springer, 2018), co-authored with Veli-Pekka Parkkinen, Christian Wallmann, Brendan Clarke, Phyllis Illari, Michael P Kelly, Charles Norell, Federica Russo and Beth Shaw. (Veli-Pekka, Christian, Phyllis and Federica are all former postdocs from the Department of Philosophy at Kent.) The book has been made freely available for all through Open Access.

Evidence-based medicine seeks to achieve improved health outcomes by making evidence explicit, and also by developing explicit methods for evaluating it. To date, evidence-based medicine has largely focused on evidence of association produced by clinical studies. As such, it has tended to overlook evidence of pathophysiological mechanisms and evidence of the mechanisms of action of interventions.

This book is the first to develop explicit methods for evaluating evidence of mechanisms in the field of medicine. It explains why it can be important to make this evidence explicit, and describes how to take such evidence into account in the evidence appraisal process. It develops procedures for seeking evidence of mechanisms, for evaluating evidence of mechanisms, and for combining this evaluation with evidence of association in order to yield an overall assessment of effectiveness.

The book offers a useful guide for all those whose work involves evaluating evidence in the health sciences, including those who need to determine the effectiveness of health interventions and those who need to ascertain the effects of environmental exposures.

The book follows on from Jon’s Leverhulme-funded project on Grading Evidence of Mechanisms in Physics and Biology, and also his AHRC project on Evaluating Evidence in Medicine.

For more details, to either purchase a hard copy or read free online, please see the publisher’s page.

 

 

2018 Arthur C. Clarke Award announced

The 2018 Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction has just been awarded to Anne Charnok’s Dreams Before the Start of Time (47North 2017), a novel set in London in the near future. Infertility is a thing of the past, and artificial wombs eliminate the struggles of pregnancy, and men and women can create children independently. But the novel asks what does it mean to be a parent? A child? A family?

Dr Paul March-Russell, Specialist Associate Lecturer in the Department of Comparative Literature and editor of Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction was on the panel of judges for the award.

Paul praised the winning title: ‘I’m delighted that this quiet, beautifully written novel has received one of the genre’s highest accolades. It eschews melodrama and sensation for a methodically thought-out narrative which is all the more human and profound.’

Further details of the Arthur C. Clarke Award are available at: www.clarkeaward.com

Student Services CARE Awards winners 2018

We are delighted to share the winners of the Student Services CARE Awards 2018, which recognises the achievements and excellence of staff members who embody the values of Student Services. This year’s winners across the five awards categories are:

Empowerment and Innovation Award: Anna Edgar-Chan (Counsellor, Student Support and Wellbeing), for her outstanding contributions to Student Support and Wellbeing including introducing e-therapy options and reducing waiting times for students.

Student Focussed Award: Hannah Greer and Jen Davey (Work-Study Scheme, Careers and Employability Service), for the Work Study Scheme, providing employability skills training, one to one mentoring and employment opportunities for students.

Partnership Award: Careers and Employability Service Team, for organising the Employability Festival at the Canterbury and Medway campuses, enhancing the employability of Kent students via links with graduate employers and developing students’ employability skills.

Spirit of Student Services Award: Cathy Myers, Specific Learning Difficulties Adviser, for her dedication to supporting staff and students during the period of industrial action and adverse weather conditions.

Team Excellence Award: Medway Master’s Office Team, for organising fundraising for the Molly McLaren Foundation.

You can read more about this year’s winners on the CARE Awards website.

Summer school in quantitative methods led by SSPSSR

Forty six students attended a two-week summer school in quantitative methods at the University from 18-30 June.

The two weeks form part of the University’s Q-Step centre’s programme, where students take a summer school so they can continue onto our degrees with minor in Quantitative Research. The programme forms part of a country wide initiative to address the shortage of quantitative skills amongst social science undergraduates in the UK. And this year our University of Kent students were joined by three external students from the UK, Hong Kong and the Nuffield foundation’s placement programme.

During the two weeks, students were given an introduction to quantitative methods, as well as having an opportunity to get to know both lecturers and teaching staff at the Q-Step centre. The two weeks consisted of teaching and social events – the latter of course coloured by the world championships. In addition to traditional seminars and lectures, the students were very lucky to attend two engaging guest seminars given by Dr Renee Luthra from the University of Essex and Rima Saini from City University reporting on their studies which relate to themes within the programme: ethnicity, race and discrimination.

Students showed great enthusiasm by interrogating and questioning these topics both in the expert seminars and in their own projects. The last day of summer school was our conference presentation day where student presentations were of a very high level- a perfect wrap up of a both socially and intellectually stimulating experience.

Thank you to all the students and to our excellent assistant lecturers Josh Townsley, Eva Sigurdardottir and Gianna Eick and Victoria Schoen for making it a great experience.

 

Athena SWAN Charters Award Ceremony 2018

The University attended the Advance HE’s Charters Awards Ceremony on 17 July at the new Swansea University’s Bay Campus in Swansea, Wales, together with 120 colleagues across the Higher Education sector in the UK.

 With these awards, Advance HE’s Athena SWAN Charter and Race Equality Charter recognises and celebrates the commitment and hard work that’s being done at the Institutions and Departments in advancing good practices in these fields.

Kent was successful in renewing its Institutional Athena SWAN Bronze award.The redacted version of the submission can be accessed here.

In addition to the Institutional Award, three of our Schools got their departmental awards; the School of Mathematics, Statistics, and Actuarial Science collected their Athena SWAN Silver award. SMSAS is the first department at the University of Kent to hold a Silver award. The School of History collected their Athena SWAN Bronze award. The School of History is the first department in the Faculty of Humanities at Kent to hold an Athena SWAN award.

The Athena SWAN Team also collected the Medway School of Pharmacy’s Athena SWAN Bronze. The Athena SWAN Team and the University of Kent know from experience that these awards are not a given and that getting an award is just the beginning. However, we would like to take this moment to celebrate the success, but also acknowledge that there is still a lot of work to do in advancing Gender Equality and in creating a fair work environment for all.

 

 

 

 

Pay Gaps and Thigh Gaps: SMFA graduating Fine Art students exhibit in London

Between 6th – 10th July, Pay Gaps and Thigh Gaps, an exhibition by a group of graduating SMFA Fine Art students was on at Old Truman’s Brewery in Brick Lane, London, as part of Free Range – A season of Graduate Art & Design Exhibitions.

Established in 2001 to showcase the work of emerging creatives, thousands of students have exhibited at the shows, taking over Old Truman Brewery spaces each summer and connecting with a London audience. It aims to celebrate talent and provide a platform for UK artists beyond education. The show was extremely successful, with an amazing turn out.

SMFA Students featured were:

BA (Hon) Fine Art

Amanda Nsubuga, Alexandra Aldham, Ayesha Chouglay, Angel Obi and Rachael Willis

MA Fine Art

Deborah Abbott

About Pay Gaps and Thigh Gaps:

There seems to be a growing precedent that in order to be recognised as a female artist you must limit your practice to being ‘feminist’. But why can’t a woman speak beyond her gender to gain recognition? We are a group of proud feminists who would like to share varying concerns beyond our genitalia (and possibly surrounding our genitalia- we would like the option). From, childhood imagination, to personal illness, we come together with uniquely different practices, to support each other as artists… who happen to be female.

More at http://www.free-range.org.uk/cgi-bin/exhibition.pl?yearID=27&exhibitionID=1443  and Instagram at pay_gapsandthigh_gaps

 

 

 

 

Kent Gives Back at bOing festival August- We need you!

Kent Gives Back, in partnership with Kent Union, is a great opportunity to enhance skills and networks whilst working together for a local community cause that matters to you.

On Saturday 25 August we are asking a group of Kent students and alumni to come and support us and volunteer at the bOing! Festival from 09:00 -17:00. But, we still appreciate it if you can only come along to volunteer for a couple of hours.

The festival takes place on the beautiful University of Kent campus in Canterbury. It will be an amazing day showcasing the very best in theatre, dance, music, films and fun for all the family, packed with magical performances and experiences.

There are many volunteering opportunities with bOing! that you can get involved in, such as being a production volunteer or a technical volunteer. You will gain extraordinary insight into the running of a venue/event. We are committed to helping you develop your skills and your confidence concerning the task of your choice. You will have the opportunity to meet others with a shared passion and also watch quality performances and screenings.

Last year’s volunteer, alumna, and current PhD student, Kasia Senyszyn (Keynes 2004), said of the experience: “…it’s so much fun, it’s a valued contribution to the fantastic programme, and seeing young and old being inspired for life right here in our city was incredible. Plus I met wonderful people and watched amazing work – for free!”

Join us at this event in August, to network, donate your time and share stories with Kent students and fellow alumni. Also, join our Facebook event page to stay up to date or email alumni@kent.ac.uk – click here to register!