In an exciting collaboration between the University of Kent, the Visual Commentary on Scripture project, King’s College, London and Canterbury Cathedral, the Department of Religious Studies has brought together some of the most widely-respected experts and historians on stained glass and theology in a special series of talks entitled ‘See Through Stories: Windows on the World’ about the iconic Miracle windows at Canterbury Cathedral.

Participants will have the opportunity to view the windows prior to each talk, which will explore how these windows were made, the stories they tell, the biblical figures they illustrate and their relevance for today.

This series features six presentations by leading public speakers:

1 May
Rabbi Dr Deborah Kahn-Harris (Principal, Leo Baeck College)
‘Who Do You Think You Are?: The Use of Genealogies in the Construction of Identity from the Bible to the BBC’

8 May
Professor Vincent Lloyd (Villanova University USA)
‘Ambivalence of Charisma: Moses from Hollywood to Canterbury’

15 May
Professor Ben Quash and Dr Michelle Fletcher (King’s College, London)
‘Where Do I Turn? Genesis 19 on When Things Fall Apart’

18 September
Professor Tod Linafelt (Georgetown University, USA)
‘What Does it Mean to be Human?: Adam (and Eve) Inside and Outside the Garden’

25 September
Neil McGregor (Founding Director Humboldt Forum, Berlin; former Director of the British Museum)
‘The Shepherds, the Magi and the Presentation in the Temple’

9 October
Paula Gooder (British theologian, Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral)
‘On Veiling and Unveiling: Church and Synagogue in Stained Glass and the Writings of Paul’

Tickets are £8 per talk or £35 for the series. Entrance is FREE for school students and teachers, and university students. All places, free and paid-for, must be booked online in advance.

Please arrive at 18.30 in the Cathedral, if you wish, for a view of the window(s) relevant to that evening (or at 17.30 for Choral Evensong beforehand). Each talk begins at 19.00 in the Clagett Auditorium, Cathedral Lodge/Study Centre.

Organised by the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Kent, and Canterbury Cathedral. The University would like to record its thanks for the support of the Friends of Canterbury Cathedral.

The Development Office will soon launch a new-look alumni website and they would like to give staff who work with alumni, and staff who are alumni a sneak peek at the new site before it goes live later this month.

You are invited to call into the Development Office in the Rutherford Annexe and the team will show you around the site and explain how you can promote alumni from your school through alumni profiles and news.

Please contact Chris Wenham on ext 3902 or alumni@kent.ac.uk to arrange a time.

The Assessment and Feedback Steering Group is holding consultation meetings with representatives from different areas of the University to discuss the proposal to introduce a Winter Assessment Period.

The paper that AFSG submitted to Education Board in February 2019 can be found on our Teaching webpages.

We invite your views on the paper. Please email your feedback/comments to afsgconsult@kent.ac.uk

The Kent Voluntary Severance Scheme (KVSS) is being launched today, Monday 15 April 2019.

You can find out more about the Scheme on our HR webpages.

If you’re interested in applying, please discuss this as soon as possible with your line manager or head of school/professional service department. The last day to request an initial KVSS quotation is Friday 7 June 2019 – or Friday 17 May 2019 if you require a pension quotation as well.

The Scheme is part of our response to the challenges facing the University and UK higher education sector, as outlined in the recent Executive Group Blog by our Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Karen Cox.

This is the first stage of the scheme. KVSS will be re-opened again at relevant times and on the same terms for those staff at risk of redundancy as part of the Organising for Success Project.

If you have any questions, email our HR team KVSSenquiries@kent.ac.uk, or ask them in person at one of our informal drop-in sessions.

Drop-in sessions:

• Tuesday 16 April, 12.30 – 14.00, Senate Committee Room 1, Canterbury
• Wednesday 17 April, 12.00 – 13.30, Boardroom R2-09, Rochester Building, Medway
• Thursday 18 April, 12.30 – 14.00, Senate Committee Room 2, Canterbury
• Tuesday 23 April, 12.30 – 14.00, Senate Committee Room 2, Canterbury
• Wednesday 24 April, 12.30 – 14.00, Senate Committee Room 2, Canterbury
• Thursday 25 April, 15.00 – 16.30, Boardroom R2-09, Rochester Building, Medway

There’s no need to book, just come along. Further sessions will be held at the beginning of next term; dates to be advised.

Alumna Christina Irwin, who graduated with a BA (Hons) in History and Philosophy of Art in 2016, has recently gained a position on the Graffiti Project, part of a Canterbury Journey project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and based at Canterbury Cathedral, which is currently seeking new volunteers.

The Canterbury Journey aims to engage new, hard to reach and diverse audiences through a volunteer programme that develops and interprets Cathedral collections. The Graffiti Project is an initiative that engages volunteers in recording marks found in the eastern crypt, etchings of lost voices from the medieval world.

‘This is such a valuable project,’ explains Christina, ‘I am acquiring new skills at one of the world’s most significant  heritage sites, learning about historic collection practices and interpretation while meeting new people and sharing a passion with Cathedral professionals, volunteers and the public. It is exciting being part of this project which will become part of the Cathedral archive collections. I feel privileged to be part of this story.’

The graffiti tells us of religious devotion, fear of damnation, of love and of humour. Unlike contemporary graffiti or street art mostly seen as anti-social vandalism, medieval graffiti incised or scratched through vibrantly painted surfaces stood out clearly and would have been easily noticed suggesting that these images were totally accepted, these marks have meaning and function. There are prayers, devotional and votive, memorials, ritual apotropaic marks, compass drawn geometric designs, and five-pointed stars or pentangles, the symbol representing mathematical perfection in Ancient Greece, in abundance. There is relatively little published material about this subject and the imagery of the medieval parishioner is steeped in folklore and superstition, challenging the search for meaning.

The many voluntary opportunities can be found here.

Dr Jason Nurse will be taking his knowledge of online privacy to the pub as part of the national Pint of Science series of events.

He will be one of three speakers in the tech-themed event in The Good Intent in John Street, Rochester on Monday 20 May. The theme for the evening is the pros and cons of modern technology.

Jason’s talk specifically addresses concerns about online advertising.  Firms can launch targeted ad campaigns suited to what they believe we want, or to influence our beliefs in particular ways. To allow such targeting, organisations constantly explore new ways to gather information about us, often at the expense of our privacy. This spans traditional web tracking, smartphone apps and new technologies (e.g. smart-tech). In this talk, Jason will demystify how online advertising works, the tricks advertisers use to track users, and what the risks to us are. He will also provide some tools and tips you can use to protect yourself online.

For more information and tickets (which usually sell out quickly) go to the Pint of Science website.

The University ’s School of Music and Fine Art presents Sweet FA… the Fine Art Degree Show 2019; an exhibition of work by 20 exciting, emerging international artists, set in the extraordinary environment of The Historic Dockyard, Chatham.

The exhibition opens with a Private View on Saturday May 18,  from 13.00-18.00 with, at 15.00, speeches from special guests; the acclaimed artist Bob & Roberta Smith, Victoria Pomery, director of the Turner Contemporary Gallery, Margate, and Karen Cox, Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Kent.

The exhibition is open to all and is free to attend. It is open to the public from Sunday 19 – Friday 24 May, from 10.00-17.00.  Please note the show is closed on Tuesday 21 May.

Continuing a tradition of showcasing bold, exploratory exhibitions by the University ’s Fine Art students, visitors will encounter a broad range of artistic styles and media, an explosion of imagination and a celebration of art’s potential for society, framed by the backdrop of The Historic Dockyard. The exhibition will offer the public a fascinating insight into contemporary art’s most recent practices and processes.

The catalogue for this year’s show is designed in collaboration with MA Curation students from the University of Kent’s School of Arts

The Degree Show Address:
The Historic Dockyard, Chatham, Kent, ME4 4TY

Entry for the private view is via The Galvanising Shop (next to the Dockyard’s visitors’ car park on the East Road, and for the rest of the exhibition, via The Historic Dockyard Chatham Visitor Entrance.

More information on opening times and directions is available on The Historic Dockyard webpages.

Find out more about the event on SMFA Facebook: @unikentmfa, SMFA website or Fine art student Instagram.

Dr Maurizio Cinquegrani, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Film, will be presenting a paper at the International Congress on Visual Culture: Latin America from the Image, the Historical Narrative and Visual Culture, to be held in San Juan at the Inter American University of Puerto Rico on Monday 15 April 2019.

Maurizio’s paper is entitled ‘Ratline Escapees and the Cinematic Landscapes of Post-War Latin America’. From Frederick Forsyth’s thriller The Odessa File (1972) to George Steiner’s philosophical novella The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. (1981), where Adolf Hitler is found alive in the Amazon jungle over thirty years after the end of the war, and to the Führer’s brief appearance in ‘Bart vs Australia’ in The Simpsons (S06E16), where he is seen struggling with his car phone in the Buenos Aires of the 1990s, the afterlife of the Third Reich has continuously been narrated or reinvented on film, literature and other media.

Based on a chapter from a monograph that Maurizio is currently writing, his paper focuses on the ways in which the presence of Nazi war criminals in Latin America, following their escape across the so-called ratlines after the war, has been portrayed on film since 1946. It explores a diverse range of case studies including classical Hollywood cinema and Latin American films, spanning across different genres including dramas, espionage, and science fiction. Two main tensions are going to be identified throughout his study: on the one hand there is vague Latin-American topography used in films exploiting post-war events to fabricate a generic cinematic space with no ties to historical accuracy; on the other, a group of films focusing on the escape and capture of Adolf Eichmann see the unfolding of a more coherent cinematic landscape.

These films will be made to dialogue with documentaries and archival footage on Jewish migration to Latin America before and after the war. Case studies include Notorious (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1946), Gilda (dir. Charles Vidor, 1946), Operation Eichmann (dir. R.G. Springsteen, 1961), They Saved Hitler’s Brain (dir. David Bradley, 1969), Boys from Brazil (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, 1978), Algunos Que Vivieron [Some Who Lived] (dir. Luis Puenzo, 2002) and Wakolda (Lucia Puenzo, 2013). Additionally, the paper is based on Maurizio’s study of archival footage held at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

To find out more about the congress, please see the page here

This Event & Experience Design Showcase takes place from Saturday 18 May to Friday 24 May, in Studio 1, Engineering Workshop on Chatham Historic Dockyard.

Opening times are:

• Saturday 18 May, 13.00 – 18.00
• Sunday to Friday 19 May –  Friday 24 May , 10.00 – 17.00
  (NB closed on Tuesday 21 May)

The Showcase, WICKED, celebrates the work of current Event and Experience Design graduating students. As this is a special celebration of the undergraduate course, we will be celebrating the achievements of our alumni from the very start of the course. Thirteen years of ambition, aspiration, achievement and excellence within education and the events industry

Like their predecessors, these early career designers have continued to make work at the forefront of contemporary practice in the ever-expanding field of events.  They have embraced changes in technology, taken delight in manipulating and crafting materials and always prioritised the creation of a memorable experience for their audiences.