The granting of another extension to the Brexit deadline means that the UK will not leave the EU on 31 October.  The University’s Brexit Working Group, led by Professor Jeremy Carrette, Dean for Europe, will continue to monitor the situation.

Professor Carrette said: ‘As Parliamentary discussions continue, we will ensure that the interests of students and staff remain at the forefront of any planning. While much of our immediate activity has been contingency planning in case of a no-deal scenario, we have also been looking to the longer-term impact of Brexit and continue to seek clarification on areas of pressing concern such as mobility, fees, travel arrangements and access to research funding.

‘Whatever the final outcome, Kent will remain an outward-looking university, proud of its European centres and its  European collaborations. We will also continue to support staff and students during this uncertain time.’

The Brexit webpages will be kept updated with new information as soon as it is available.

Students and staff at Kent can now receive 25% discount on Sports Massage only appointments. Discounted prices are £15 for 1 hour, or £10 for 30 minutes.

Second and third year Sports Therapy & Rehabilitation students, under the supervision of vastly experienced therapists, provide the services at the University of Kent’s Sports Ready Clinic.

Through the use of state-of-the-art equipment and innovative techniques, you can reduce your pain and aid your recovery time within the following services:

– Sports Therapy & Rehabilitation (diagnose, provide treatment and an exercise plan for a specific injury or pain, not just sporting injuries!).

– Injury Prevention (reduce your risk of injury)

– Sports Massage only

– Alter-G (Anti-Gravity Treadmill) session only

Non-Discounted Prices are £20 for one hour or £15 for 30 minutes.

Discounts are available for Sports Therapy & Rehabilitation, Injury Prevention and Alter-G sessions:

-FREE for University of Kent Sport and Exercise Sciences (SSES) staff & students.

-50% discount for University of Kent staff & students (non SSES).

-25% discount for family of University of Kent staff & students.

-25% discount for University of Kent Alumni.

To book please contact the Sports Ready Clinic, Medway Park below.

Phone: 01634 888137          Email: sportinjury@kent.ac.uk

Book Online or visit the Sports Ready clinic webpage.

The School of Engineering and Digital Arts is delighted to announce the undertaking of a £3 million redevelopment and modernisation of engineering and design facilities, due for completion in July 2020.

This includes an engineering workshop and fabrication facilities, a dedicated makerspace for innovation, collaboration and the development of practical skills, a virtual reality suite, production studio (including photography, video and green screen facilities) and a large teaching and design studio.

These changes will deliver modern and advanced teaching and research facilities supporting all Engineering, Design and Digital Arts subjects.

Professor Farzin Deravi, Head of School, commented ‘Our new facilities will provide a creative environment, encouraging critical thinking and the development of practical skills, essential to a future career in Engineering and Design in the twenty-first century‘.

Stats Desk, the University’s statistical consultancy service, is the longest-running help service on campus. It began on 1 April 1994 as a three month trial!

Run by the SMSAS Statistics group, the service is free of charge and is supported by the Unit for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (UELT).

The core users of the service are postgraduate students undertaking research projects and who need some “quants” advice. Stats Desk can also assist academic colleagues, and the supervisors of research students are welcome to come along to appointments.

Undergraduate students wanting help with coursework should instead use the Maths and Stats clinic run by SLAS.

Find out more about the statistics consultancy service

Harnessing our microbial ‘Guardians of the Gut’ is the title of the Wain Medal Lecture 2019, on Wednesday 30 October at 17.00. The lecture will be given by Dr Lindsay J Hall, Microbiome Group Leader & Wellcome Trust Investigator for Norwich-based Quadram Institute Bioscience.

The human microbiome has emerged as a central player in human health and wellbeing; modulating our immune system, providing resistance to pathogenic microbes, and helping to digest the food that we eat. Importantly, birth and the first 1000 days represents a critical developmental window in which microbes and their human host ‘communicate’, laying the foundations for lifelong health.

It is now recognised that disturbing this fledgling microbial ecosystem has both short- and long-term consequences such as increased risk of infection, allergy, and chronic inflammatory diseases. Thus, understanding the factors that modulate the microbiome during the first stages of life, during pregnancy, and in infancy, is a key research focus.

In this Wain Medal lecture, Dr Hall will discuss the important roles the microbiome plays, particularly during early life, including recent clinical work relating to beneficially modulating the preterm infant microbiome, and our mechanistic studies using model systems to determine mode-of-action for specific microbiota members (ie Bifidobacterium), with a key focus on developing novel live biotherapeutics for improving infant health.

The lecture will take place in Woolf Lecture Theatre on Canterbury campus. Admission is free and open to all.

Picture shows: The dominant infant microbiota member Bifidobacterium.

The annual 25 Year Lunch, hosted by the Vice-Chancellor, was held in the Beagle Restaurant on Thursday, 17 October.

The lunch celebrates and recognises the contribution each staff member has made over the years at the University.  In recognition of their time at Kent invitees can choose to receive a gift (we work in partnership with Fenwicks) which will be presented to them by the Vice-Chancellor or, they can opt to have a donation made to a Charity of their choice.

Eight members of staff attended to celebrate and, although the gathering was smaller than usual, the Beagle Restaurant was the perfect venue and a thoroughly enjoyable time was held by all.

New multi-million pound investment to support flagship Bioscience doctoral training centre at Kent

The School of Biosciences has been awarded a multi-million pound investment from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC, a part of UK Research and Innovation) to provide new PhD studentships as part of a South Coast Biosciences Doctoral Training Partnership (SoCoBio DTP). The flagship programme will generate a pipeline of highly skilled researchers by creating a supportive and interdisciplinary environment where students learn to innovate and add value to society.

Professor Colin Robinson, Head of School, Biosciences, University of Kent is quoted as saying;

“The University of Kent is excited to be part of the SoCoBio Team that has been awarded this prestigious BBSRC DTP. We look forward to ensuring that the students enrolled in this programme will benefit from the excellent academic and industrial expertise that exists across the consortium. This DTP represents a valuable investment in the future of scientific excellence in the UK”

The first students will start in September 2020 and the projects will be advertised soon. Watch this space for updates!

Ben Hutchinson, Professor of European Literature in the Department of Modern Languages and Academic Director of the Paris School of Arts and Culture, has published an article in the Times Literary Supplement titled ‘Peter Handke: entering the curious canon’, a consideration of the legacy of the controversial Nobel laureate.

Ben writes that the Austrian writer’s reputation had long preceded him, even before the Nobel committee’s decision to award him the 2019 prize for literature. He notes that “the decision has not so much polarized opinion – to use the customary cliché – as galvanized it: ‘dumbfounded by the selection’, the president of Pen America speaks for many when she concludes that ‘the literary community deserves better’. In 2019, the Nobel committee seems to have achieved something it very rarely does, namely to unite everyone in agreement”.

The crucial issue, however, is not Handke’s politics, but his poetics. Does his work matter? Ben asks whether Handke will continue to be read a century from now, or whether he will fall into obscurity like a number of Nobel laureates. “Framed this way, the question is not so much about Handke’s questionable political interventions – above all, his defence of Slobodan Milošević – as about his literary merit. Is he any good?”