University of Kent

Spring 2014

A newsletter created by postgraduates for postgraduates

The face behindthe building:Charles Darwin

Google Glass:A new type ofobservation

Technology andthe future of signlanguage

theGradPost

Image: Dr Campbell Gourlay

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Editorial KGSA

Hello,

I hope everyone has had a great holiday periodand that work was not too demanding!

For those of you who don’t know, my name is VidČalovski and I am the President of the KentGraduate Student Association (KGSA). It is ourresponsibility to represent postgraduate studentsto both Kent Union (KU) and the University. Whilewe primarily deal with the social aspect of yourlife here at Kent, we also campaign on variousissues and try to improve the postgraduatestudent experience.

At the beginning of last term we helped you allmove in during Welcome Week and hosted allsorts of events over the course of the week.Over the rest of the Autumn Term, we held a filmnight, a games night, helped out with theMaster’s buffet and hosted a buffet forThanksgiving. Although it was a busy first term,we still hope to build on this.

At the time of writing, we are planning awelcome back pizza and film night, which willhave free Domino’s pizza and another gamesnight so that students can enjoy a break fromtheir studies. In March we hope to hold a quiznight, charging a small entry fee, with theproceeds going to charity. We have also startedplanning a postgraduate trip to Edinburgh,which we hope will be in June, so watch thisspace for more details.

Over the course of the next few months we will becampaigning for free Wednesday afternoons forpostgraduate students, so that they can participatein sports. We will also be working with the KentUnion Vice-President (Education), Alex Murray, toensure that provisions in the library over thesummer will not be too disrupted forpostgraduates, so that people can get on with theirdissertations. Lastly, we would also like to drawyour attention to the fact that postgraduatestudents can use available Woolf seminar roomsthat have not been booked for either work or socialpurposes, between 6.00-11.00pm on weekdays.

To find out more about our events or if you wantto get involved, find us on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/kentgsa or follow uson twitter: @KentGSA or feel free to email viaKGSA@Kent.ac.uk

Good luck with the new term.

Vid ČalovskiKGSA PresidentPhD in Social Policy in the School of SocialPolicy, Sociology and Social Research

An update from your KGSA President

The Graduate School is pleased to announce thewinners of the first round of the 2013/14Postgraduate Experience Awards. The Awardsare designed to provide funding to postgraduatestudents (both taught and research) to runevents or projects which have an interdisciplinaryor external focus, aimed at enhancing thepostgraduate experience at Kent. Funding of upto £1,500 may be awarded to successfulcandidates.

Congratulations to the following postgraduatestudents who were awarded funding from thefirst round of the Awards; Christopher Chang(PhD English), Christina Chatzipoulka (PhDArchitecture), Luca Di Gregorio (PhD Italian), andBarbara Franchi (PhD English) for theirinterdisciplinary conference on ‘Homelessness’.

Further congratulations go to Harriet Gifford (MA Sound and Image), Angela McArthur (MA Sound and Image) and Amie Rai (MASound and Image), who successfully securedfunding for a series of ‘Inspire Gatherings’.

The deadline for the second round ofapplications is Friday 21 March and winners willbe announced shortly after this.

Hannah HuxleyMA in English and American Literature

Postgraduate Experience Awards 2013-14

First round winners and second round applications

Hey guys, and welcome to 2014’s first releaseof the GradPost.

Firstly, we would like to give a big thank you toeveryone who helped to make the lastpublication of 2013 a huge success and thatincludes all of you who picked up a copy! Weare delighted with the positive response wehave received and hope that you will find thisissue just as enjoyable.

As the last edition focused primarily on theHumanities, in this issue we have a bevy ofScience-related articles for your readingpleasure. We take a look at the wonderfulworld of Bioscience research at the Universityof Kent, and then have a sneak peek into thefuture of entrepreneurship and technologyover the next ten years. Discover the amazingadvances made into sign languagetechnology, and marvel at the possibilitiesoffered by Microsoft’s Google Glass.

In this edition, we will be catching up with theGlobal Skills Award Programme and featuringthe winners of the first round of thePostgraduate Experience Awards. There isalso a short update from the Kent GraduateStudent Association with a preview of what’scoming up during the rest of this year. Finally,we will be continuing our ‘Face Behind theBuilding’ and ‘Get Involved’ series with a focuson Charles Darwin and Kent’s Boxing Club.

As always, please do not hesitate to contactus via Facebook, Twitter or email if you areinterested in being involved with thepublication. We hope the New Year has beentreating everyone well so far, and we arelooking forward to hearing your responses.

Editors

Jian Wei-Jeanson Gan LimMA in the Contemporary

Maria Christine Sveidahl SommerMA in Curating

Frances ReadingMA in English and American Literature

Curiously, a world away in Kentucky, by somecosmic coincidence, the baby Abraham Lincolnhad also just been born. Darwin spent the daysof his youth collecting beetles, already showingthe methodical, observational and laboriouspatience that would come to typify his matureapproach to the natural sciences. Flash forward18 years and the young Darwin had dropped outof medical school, much to the chagrin of hisfather, and was instead pursuing his lifelongfascination with geology and natural history. Theopportunity of his lifetime came early when in1831 he was offered a supernumerary positionon the HMS Beagle. The next five years werespent on an epic odyssey that circumnavigatedthe globe, on which he made many of theobservations that came to be central to histheory of natural selection. The most notable ofthese came upon reaching the GalápagosIslands, when he noticed that various speciesdiffered from island to island. Mockingbirds andgiant-tortoises, for instance, exhibited differencesin the isolated locales, yet clearly showed acommon ancestry. A seed had been planted inDarwin’s mind.

The publication of his journals had ensuredhim fame in scientific circles by the end of theBeagle’s voyage in 1836 and it was not longbefore he was elected to the council of theGeological Society of London. Over the next

few years and with the assistance of some of thecountry’s most illustrious scientists, Darwinbegan to develop his theory of evolution. It washis reading of Malthus’ An Essay on the Principleof Population that germinated the alreadyplanted seed of natural selection. This essaydescribed the characteristic of animals to breedbeyond their resources and led to Darwinnoticing that ‘under these circumstancesfavourable variations would tend to bepreserved, and unfavourable ones to bedestroyed. The result of this would be theformation of new species’. With this theory nowin place it only remained for him to back it up,and years were spent performing countlessexperiments in the selective breeding ofanimals and plants.

These preoccupations even leaked into hispersonal life. When considering the proposal ofmarriage, he weighed it up with his usualdeductive reasoning, citing in the pros columnthat a wife would be ‘better than a dog anyhow’.Despite his apparent indifference, he concluded:‘Marry – Marry. Marry QED’ – quod eratdemonstrandum (what was to be demonstrated).It was shortly after this time, in 1842, that thenewly-wed Darwin moved to Down House inKent, where he lived the rest of his life with hiswife (and cousin) Emma Wedgwood. Here hecould avoid the pressures of London thatexacerbated his already ailing health.

University of Kent 3

On the Origin of DarwinThe face behind the building: Charles DarwinOn February 12 1809, deep in the Shropshire countryside,Susannah Darwin was delivered of one of the most importanthumans to have lived – Charles Robert Darwin.

Additional pressures came with the publicationof Alfred Russel Wallace’s work ‘On the Lawwhich has Regulated the Introduction of NewSpecies.’ These papers displayed theoriesremarkably similar to Darwin’s own, and he wasforced to publish his own findings. His seminalwork On the Origin of Species was published in1859; by 1870 it was widely held true andaccepted in most scientific circles.Unsurprisingly, the religious implications meantthat it was met with controversy and suspicion,particularly in regard to the evolution of manfrom lower forms i.e. apes. However, evenchronic bouts of illness did little to impedeDarwin’s single-minded determination to qualifyhis theories, and in 1871 he published TheDescent of Man, and Selection in Relation toSex. By the end of his life the irrefutableevidence he had garnered, left him an agnostic.

His immeasurable contribution to theunderstanding of the natural world has justlyearned him the pre-eminently positioned statuein the main hall of the Natural History museumwhere, enthroned, he sits king-like. And, as theright of one of the greatest Englishmen, he is tobe found on the reverse of every ten-poundbanknote. His revolutionary theories changed theface of biology, zoology and anthropology, andthus bear special importance to the University ofKent which has leading schools in all of thesefields. They owe him a great debt, as do we all.So in tribute, many of Darwin College’sconstituent buildings are also titled aftersignificant names from the man’s life; forinstance: ‘Missing Link’, which alludes to thefossil necessary to complete the evolutionarysequence showing man’s descent from the apes.And, of course, the well-loved bar and bistroOrigins, named after his magnum opus.

Dan Stocker-WilliamsMA in English and American Literature

With small movements of her fingers, shechanges the way she sees the world. The viewof her bedroom is normal, except for the artificialdimension that is layered over it; in one corner ofher vision she expands and then discards adigital display telling her she is running late forlectures. In another there are emails she hasreceived overnight, but by sweeping her thumbfrom right to left she glances at them anddecides there’s nothing urgent.

She drives to campus, changing her route toavoid an accident that has been uploaded live tothe Glass as she’s been driving.

So far, the Google Glass headset doesn’tfunction hugely differently from a smart phone.It provides the same information, gesturerecognition technology, allowing the user tosubtly motion with one hand and have thattranslated into movement of data across theirfield of vision, like gesturing on a touchscreen.

Its Google Glass’ plan to change our way ofseeing that is really exciting. From touristspointing to a building on the skyline and beingtold, “that is the Shard”, to students highlightingtext and searching the internet for anexplanation, the applications of the technologyare vast and still relatively unknown. It is all aboutinteractive vision.

So imagine that our student arrives at her lecture.Her lecturer can, from a central system, controlwhat appears on the headsets of all students inthe class.

Imagine that she and her classmates are able towatch live surgery as it takes place, through theeyes of the surgeon, whose own headsetrecords the whole process from start to finish.

Maybe our student has diabetes and her glassesdocument the sugar content of everything sheeats during the day. Or maybe she is growingplant strains for a research paper and herglasses take regular images while she works,documenting changes in leaf mass and tissuepigmentation.

There are already individuals in the world whodocument everything about their lives. The termis ‘Life Logging’, and it means taking video orphotographing everything that occurs to you,and uploading it to a central database. At themoment, due to the cost of data storage and theinconvenience of carting a video camera aroundwith you, it is a niche field of interest. However,as data becomes cheaper and technology suchas Google Glass more universal, it might turninto something huge.

And it is not as unsettling an idea as it firstseems. Preliminary designs for programmes thatstop filming at critical points, like sensingbathroom visits, are already in production, and itis likely that most of these ‘memories’ will neverbe viewed again. Instead, they’ll allow individualsto make patterns out of daily behaviour, adjusttheir calorie intake, find lost car keys, andprovide evidence in criminal cases. Crowdsourcing, the idea that the public can offer theirproblem-solving skills or even their data to helpwith research, could benefit hugely if LifeLoggers could be persuaded to share theirstored information. For example, computerssifting through it to determine when and whereBritish citizens catch glimpses of rare birds.

If you can get over the vague sense offoreboding this 1984 approach to technologybrings, the possibilities are nearly endless. Oncedata is stored, all it takes is a clever algorithm tomake it useful. Microsoft’s offices in Seattlerecently programmed it's elevators to monitor thetravel habits of it's users, with the result that bywatching an employee walk, the lifts are able topredict if they’ll need to press the ‘going up’button.

At the moment, most of this is theoretical, butGoogle does seem determined to get it'sGlasses to consumers as soon as possible. Formy own part, I’m not really worried about how itwill take everything I currently have on my phoneand put it in my field of vision. I’m excited aboutwhat it could mean for advancing fields whereobservation is key, and interactive observationcould be the future.

Stella BennettMSc in Science, Communication and Society

To see and to know

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Google Glass: a new type of observation

A student wakes up on a Monday morning and fumbles blindlyfor her glasses. She arranges them over her ears, slips ametallic bangle on to her wrist, and then gestures in the air.

In the research labs of the School ofBiosciences, many different areas are beinginvestigated, “primarily on essential biologicalprocesses at the molecular and cellular level,encompassing the disciplines of biochemistry,genetics, biotechnology and biomedicalresearch”. The research being conducted rangesfrom cancer drug resistance, problems with DNArepair, In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF), chromosomalabnormalities, the basis for diseases likeAlzheimer’s and ageing, using yeast cell models.

Other labs are looking further into the basis ofbacterial, viral and parasite pathogenicity, thestructure of proteins and their synthesis, and theoptimisation of biological pathways and vitaminsynthesis. Some of this work could even revealnew life forms and pathways! It is all veryexciting and well worth researching further. TheDirector of Research, Professor Darren Griffin,told me that last year there was “anunprecedented achievement in winningcompetitive research grants, attracting three newacademic colleagues, graduating 16 PhDstudents and hosting three high profile events –the Postgraduate Symposium in July, the WainMedal Lecture and the Stacey Symposium”.

There are a number of research groups withinthe School, including the Centre for MolecularProcessing (CMP) Group. This group has many

interdisciplinary projects, as well as industrialcollaborations, such as those with LonzaBiologics, MedImmune and GlaxoSmithKline.This enables students to gain experience inindustrial settings as well as in academia, andobserve direct applications to their research. TheCMP Director, Professor Mark Smales stated that,“A current major research focus of the Centre isto utilise synthetic biology approaches to designand re-design biological processes, and systemsto manipulate expression systems (bacterial,fungi, algae and mammalian cells), forapplication in the industrial biotechnology field.The Centre is a key player in this area, asevidenced by its leading two national networks,funded by the Biotechnology and BiologicalSciences Research Council (BBSRC),Engineering and Physical Sciences ResearchCouncil (EPSRC) and Technology Strategy Board(TSB) in industrial biotechnology.” Projects in thisgroup involve researching “mechanisms andcellular requirements that influence diseasestates and the synthesis of therapeutic agents,biomedicines/biotherapeutics, and smallmolecules from cellular systems”. These projectsprovide more scientific knowledge on importantcellular processes, and aim to ultimately reducethe time for therapeutic products to get intohospitals and on to pharmacy shelves afterresearch, development and manufacture.

Another active group, the Kent Fungal Group(KFG), “represents one of the largest collectionsof fungal research groups in the UK”. DrCampbell Gourlay discribed his research lab inthe KFG as having “a strong interest inunderstanding the cellular processes that governthe control of cell death and pathogenesis. Ourcurrent projects focus upon the molecularmechanisms by which fungal cells adapt andthrive in the face of environmental challenge. Ofparticular interest are interactions betweenpathways that are central to a cells ability torespond to stress and control cell death. The labuses pathogenic and non-pathogenic yeastspecies as well as human and cancer cells totackle these issues, and works closely withmedical microbiologists and clinicians within theEast Kent University Hospital Trust”.

The School has had many achievements with itsresearch. These include characterising forms of theprotein myosin found in the heart, creating acomputational model for protein synthesis, researchinto how reactive oxygen species increase ageingin yeast cells, and developing a means to enhancethe effectiveness of the drug Herceptin againstbreast cancer. All of the research conducted hereat the University of Kent is worthwhile, and whetheryou find science engaging or have other interests,research into these areas provide great benefits tothe welfare of mankind and may be instrumental tofuture scientific developments. It all starts here atthe University of Kent, with the wonderful world ofBioscience research. If you are interested in findingout more, visit the websitewww.kent.ac.uk/bio/research/

Charlotte GodfreyPhD Student in Biochemistry

University of Kent 5

The world of bioscience researchBiosciences at the University of Kent

Have you ever wondered what happens within those mysteriousBiosciences buildings, behind closed doors by people wearingwhite lab coats? Well, now I shall open the door on the subjectas one of those white coats myself, and hope to show why it isworth thinking about!

Michael Sippey, Vice-President of Product atTwitter, said that while wearable tech will be big;devices themselves will be more powerful,connected and smaller. “We are living in ashared, more connected society, and this is anincredible opportunity for social media”. HenriSeydoux, founder of Parrot, emphasised theconnectedness of everything, including clothes,bodies and wearable tech.

The Bitcoin roundtable concluded that ifsomeone is hoping to make a lot of money with itquickly then it is very risky and not advised. Butif someone believes in the fundamentals ofBitcoin and is ready to take a small risk then yes,Bitcoin is of course worth looking at. But it isimportant to understand that there is a possibilityof losing everything.

The European venture capital roundtableconcluded that it is a good time for the Europeanentrepreneur scene, because there is a lot ofavailable money. But entrepreneurs need to movequickly from Europe to the US, because it isdifficult to be a global champion without makingit there.

It featured speakers like Silicon Valley authorGuy Kawasaki and ‘Nest Labs’ founder TonyFadell. Topics ranged from digital currency towearable technology. This article will focus onseveral speakers’ predictions for the next tenyears, and how they believe the coming decadewill influence our way of living. This should beparticularly useful for aspiring University of Kentstudents who are passionate aboutentrepreneurship or technology. What will the nextten years look like in technology and what couldentrepreneurs focus on?

Fred Wilson, Twitter and Instagram investor,opened the conference by pointing out three bigupcoming trends: networks, unbundling andsmartphones. Firstly, hierarchies from the bottomto top will be changed by technology-drivennetworked crowds. This means that the generalpublic will decide the popularity and success ofa product. Secondly, media sources that containvarious kinds of newscasts will evolve to focusonly on one type of news. For example, amagazine that focuses only on tech will notcontain any other type of news. Thirdly, we are allconnected through smartphone devices andthere is a change, as we know, from PC’s tomobiles. Finally, the four areas for entrepreneursto watch are – Bitcoin, wellness, data leakageand trust/identity.

The next speaker, Guy Kawasaki, had thefollowing to say to entrepreneurs; instead ofpitching, presenting PowerPoints or businessplans, an entrepreneur should most importantlybuild a prototype. This should be done bycreating a product that you and your friends wantto use, and then hoping that the rest of the worldwants that as well. European entrepreneursshould focus on making a prototype that SiliconValley or Americans want to copy. He alsoadvised that a business leader should not askanyone, including an employee, to do somethingthat the leader would not do.

According to David Marcus, President of PayPal,money is being reinvented and it is becomingmobile. Tony Conrad, founder of about.me,emphasised in his presentation the importanceof networking from day one. “It is important to beinnovative, to know the users, and to grab theirattention”. His thoughts on future trends?“Everything, and every category, is up for grabs”.

Technical evangelist Robert Scoble gave fivefuture areas to focus on. These are: the rise ofsensors, wearable technology, locationdatabases, and the ongoing rise of social mediaand data. Also, everything will be personalised,new software will know what we want and willsee everything. It will be important to know yourcustomer in the new landscape more than everbefore.

In conclusion, Le Web’s ‘The Next 10 Years’covered many different scenarios of where theworld is going and at the same time offeredentrepreneurs numerous tips on what to focuson. All the videos of the past conferences areavailable on YouTube. Hopefully, there are KentUniversity entrepreneurs who will seize theopportunity and have changed the world alreadybefore the next Le Web conference in in Paris,December 2014.

Albert KampeMSc in Computer Science

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Le Web 2013 and ‘The next 10 years’Future trends in entrepreneurship and technology‘Le Web’ is the world’s most talked about start-up and web entrepreneur conference, taking placeannually in Paris and London. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the event, the topic of the lastconference (December 2013) was ‘The Next 10 Years.’

Dates for your diary

University of Kent 7

Sign to the future

Even with the existence of sign language,conversation between a hearing-impaired personand others can at times be difficult as noteveryone can understand sign language. BritishSign Language is the first or preferred languageof many hearing-impaired people in the UK; withan estimated 125,000 deaf adults and 20,000children using it. Thousands of non-deaf peopleuse the language also, such as relatives of deafpeople, sign language interpreters, or thoseworking within the hearing-impaired community.The introduction of any technology that helpsbreak down barriers and makes communicationeasier is therefore very exciting.

Interest in this area of research has seen a surgein recent years. A special sign language ringwon the Red Dot Design Award last year andconsisted of a bracelet and rings worn ondifferent fingers in the style of Buddhist prayerbeads. It proposed to detect signing motionsand translate them into a voice emitted by thebracelet. It would also translate voice into text onthe bracelet which could then be read by thewearer. Some research has attempted to usecameras and even digital gloves to capture signlanguage gestures but as yet they have not beenvery cost-effective.

Microsoft is currently in the process of developinga Kinect-based sign language translator to aid thehearing-impaired in communication. MicrosoftResearch only began working on this project withthe Chinese Academy of Sciences and BeijingUnion University in February 2012, and so it is stillin its early stages. However, a lot of progress hasalready been made, with the translator prototyperecognising 370 of the most popular words inboth Chinese and American Sign Languages.British Sign Language is likely to be anotheroption once the project is complete. The idea forthe sign language translator came about from theKinect for Xbox which was originally intended forgaming. The sensors read body positions,

movements, and trajectory and translate them intocommands with the help of a computer.Researchers realised that this had the potential tounderstand sign language gestures and translatethem into written text or spoken word. Thetranslator is also able to convert the words spokenby people into sign language in real-time, and isdemonstrated via a digital avatar on screen or aholographic projection. Professor Xilin Chen, theDeputy Director of the Institute of ComputingTechnology at the Chinese Academy of Scienceshad already been studying sign languagerecognition for nearly a decade, and with aspecial education programme at Beijing UnionUniversity providing teachers and studentparticipants, it was a perfect fit for MicrosoftResearch.

Even though there may still be a number ofkinks to work through with the prototype (onebeing that sign language users sign differentlyfrom one another) it is easy to imagine howuseful this translator can be. It could make apositive impact on the lives of many deaf andhearing-impaired people who use sign languagein a host of everyday situations such as inhospitals, information kiosks, reception areas,and for presentations in meetings. This way,a non-hearing person would be able toeffectively communicate with those who do notunderstand sign language without the aid ofan interpreter, thus opening up more jobopportunities and a host of other areas notpreviously explored. With Microsoft reportedlycreating its own Google Glass-like eyewear,there are a number of ways in which the signlanguage technology could be integrated intoboth current and upcoming gadgets. It is stillnot known when this project will be available toa mainstream audience, but it is safe to say thatit will be well-received when it does.

Maureen Chioma Amadi MSc in Developmental Psychology

Technology and the future ofsign languageCommunication is a very important facet of our lives.A notion that is ingrained in us, and plays such an integralpart in our everyday lives and in society, it is somethingwe do not often think about as it comes so naturally.

Found in TranslationFriday 30 May 2014, Institute ofContemporary Arts, LondonFound in Translation is a postgraduateconference for students of literature and relateddisciplines from CHASE-affiliated institutions.This interdisciplinary conference will investigatethe ways in which translation is a productivecultural force.

For more information visit the websitehttp://foundintranslationconference.wordpress.com/

Postgraduate ResearchFestivalMonday 23 June 2014, Woolf CollegeThe Festival is a great opportunity forpostgraduates, both taught and research,to showcase their research to fellow studentsand staff.

The day will include:• Poster presentations by students fromeach faculty

• PechaKucha presentations by students (20 x 20 second slides)

• Inspiring and thought-provoking academictalks

• Panel sessions led by key academic staff• A drinks reception and awards presentation

Registration opens on 1 April

Find out more on the Graduate School websitewww.kent.ac.uk/graduateschool

Make no mistake, boxing is a physicallydemanding sport that requires strength, speed,mobility, and most importantly, stamina. Kent'sBoxing Club does well to represent this fact andwhile each lesson does spend a significantamount of time refining technique, it is thefoundations and limits of the body’s physicalcapabilities that tend to receive the most benefitfrom the training. Each session varies from weekto week although a typical training session beginswith a quick warm-up, followed by a segmentfocused on refining skills and techniques beforeconcluding with circuit training that lastssomewhere between 15 and 20 minutes.

It is the middle segment, where technique andskill are worked on, that makes up the majority ofeach training session. During this segment, pupilsengage in a range of exercises that vary on aweekly basis. By far the most exciting of theseexercises are the ones that involve a sparringelement, where pairs of students will trade jabs,straights and uppercuts, and combine a series ofpunches against one another. If this all soundsintimidating to potential newcomers, beginnersneed not feel unsettled as pupils of similar skilllevels are paired during these sessions. Morefrequently, these exercises involve one pupilholding up mitts for the other to practise theirtechniques against before switching positions.Each session tends to involve a good amount oftime spent shadow boxing (an exercise where theboxer simulates fighting against an imagined

opponent). While these exercises tend to lack thetension found in true sparring, they earn their rightas excellent workouts, as many can readily attest.

Circuit training is certainly the most exhaustingpart of these lessons, and while few would bequick to claim it as something they look forwardto, there is no doubt as to the tremendous benefitit provides to anyone interested in physicalconditioning. Boxing coach, Norman Phillips isenthusiastic about the sport and has had 30years of experience coaching amateur boxers.Tough as nails, there is little mollycoddling fromhis end, and he expects great things fromanyone willing to put in the effort and dedicationnecessary to become a great boxer.

Lessons are held in the Sports Centre everyThursday and Friday, 4.30pm-6pm. If you havegot a gung-ho, never-give-up attitude, doyourself a favour and give boxing a try at Kent;you might just find it one of the best decisionsyou have ever made.

Jian Wei-Jeanson Gan LimMA in the Contemporary

DPC 116577 03/14

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Get involved: boxingWhether you are looking to get involved in something physicalfollowing a day of academic activity, or you are aiming to catcha bit of the glory offered by a sport with a long tradition, theUniversity of Kent Boxing Club is prepared to give you all ithas got: just so long as you are prepared to do the same.

GradPost Team2013-14Editors Frances ReadingMA in English and American Literature Jian Wei-Jeanson Gan LimMA in The ContemporaryMaria SveidahlMA in Curating

Sub Editors Hannah HuxleyMA in English and American Literature Charlotte GodfreyPhD in Biochemistry

News Editor Chioma Maureen AmadiMSc in Developmental Psychology

Revise Editors Prajay GhaghdaMA in Comparative LiteraturePauline McGonagleMA Postcolonial Studies

Features EditorDan Stocker-WilliamsMA in English and American Literature

Production EditorAlbert KampeMSc in Computer Science

ContributorsStella BennettMSc in Science, Communication and Society

Vid ČalovskiPhD Social Policy

Twitter and FacebookHannah HuxleyPrajay Ghaghda

Graduate SchoolKatie WatsonGraduate School AssistantRos BeechingGraduate School Co-ordinator

Production Design and LayoutDesign & Print Unit

Spring Term

Following a successful first term, the GlobalSkills Award programme resumed this year witha whole host of interesting lectures and usefulworkshops included in the Spring schedule.Participants of the Award have so far enjoyedlectures on the shrinking of (genetic) male bits,the Eurozone Crisis, global poverty, and theshifting political power in Putin’s Russia, toname but a few. Workshops on areas such aspresentation skills, leadership and careermanagement have also proved popular.

Dr Kevin Dutton gave a lecture entitled ‘TheWisdom of Psychopaths’, and Professor PaulSweeting gave his view on the banks and theirrole both in the financial crisis and it’s recovery,

among other discussionson a variety ofworldwide issues.Workshops focused onimproving interviewskills, preparing CVs orcover letters andnetworking will continue to runthroughout the term. The last lecture of theacademic year will see participants have theopportunity to structure their own lecturediscussing cultural differences, with somestudents offering a short presentation, drawingupon their own experiences in various multi-cultural backgrounds.

Hannah HuxleyMA in English and American Literature

Global Skills Award