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Newsletter10/10/2014
School of Anthropology and Conservation
Keep in touch with us:
UniKentSac
@KentSAC
01227 827056
Keep in touch with us:
UniKentSac
@KentSAC
01227 827056
Spring Term UnderwayWelcome back everyone. We hope you had a restful and enjoyable break. The Spring term is well underway with lots of opportunities for you to get involved, enhance your University experience and meet new friends. Make sure you have checked out the list of seminars this term - really excellent speakers!
National Student SurveyThis is a fantastic opportunity to celebrate your SAC experience and also give us your constructive feedback; something we really value. The survey is mainly open to final year students and if you are eligible you will have been emailed an invitation to participate by Ipsos MORI.
If you complete the survey by 13th February you can claim a £10 Amazon voucher.
If you are an eligible SAC student who completes the survey and presents your receipt to reception by 1st April you can join the SAC Raffle! You could win ...
£40 Amazon voucher University Monopoly Game University Retro Hoody
For more information and terms & conditions visit our website.
Newsletter30/01/2015
School of Anthropology and Conservation
Page 2Staff changes & PG information event
Page 3Research activity
Page 4Research activity cont
Page 5Upcoming events
Page 6Professor Philippe Descola visit
Page 7Opportunities & activities
Staff Changes
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Kate AyresIt was with great sadness that we bid farewell to Kate Ayres on Wednesday 28th January. Having joined SAC in March 2013 Kate worked as the student support assistant. Kate leaves us to join the Careers and Employability service at the University. Kate has been an exceptional colleague and provided a caring and efficient service to students. She will be greatly missed, but we wish her all the very best in her new role. We love you Kate!
Alexandra Leduc-PagelWe are very pleased to welcome Alexandra to the School. Alexandra is the new Research & International Development Officer. Alexandra comes to us from SOAS and has a wealth of experience with research funding applications, research impact and internationalisation. Alexandra is based in room 161a and would love to meet with staff to discuss your research and ways she can support you. [email protected]
Postgraduate Information EventMonday 23rd February 5-7pm
This is an excellent opportunity for anyone considering progressing onto a Master’s or PhD. Central University staff will be available to talk about scholarships and funding. You may be particularly interested in the new Postgraduate Support Scheme which offers £10,000 bursaries to eligible students starting a Master’s degree in September 2015.
Representatives from all academic schools will also be in attendance and so will be available to discuss programmes, entry requirements and the application process with you.
Information and booking for this event is available online.
If you have any questions regarding postgraduate programmes please contact Katie Watson. [email protected]
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Research ActivityWhat’s been happening recently?
Publication in ScienceThere has been considerable press coverage of Matt Skinner and Tracy Kivell’s paper recently published in the leading scientific research journal, Science. Their paper Human-like hand use in Australopithecus africanus discusses their research findings which support archaeological evidence that Australopithecus africanus, a 3-2 million year old species, has a human-like trabecular bone pattern typically adoped during tool use.
Publication in Current BiologyMatt Struebig, Bob Smith and SAC alumnus Kristian Metcalfe presented their research on safeguarding Borneo’s mammal population in prestigious journal Current Biology. Their paper, Targeted Conservation to Safeguard a Biodiversity Hotspot from Climate and Land-Cover Change, provides an evidence base which they hope will make an important difference to conservation efforts on the ground. The team will be presenting its portfolio to government representatives through the Borneo Futures initiative.
The rare green and golden bell frog was relocated for the Sydney Olympic village. Photograph: Esther Beaton/Rex features
Publication in Frontiers in Ecology & the Environment
A consortium of international partners including Professor Richard Griffiths and MSc student Gemma Harding sought to determine the effectiveness of animal translocations in response to construction and other human developments. The paper, Mitigation-driven translocations: are we moving wildlife in the right direction?, demonstrates that the practice rarely succeeds and may compound issues leading to extinction. Media activity around this paper has reached upwards of 33,600 followers on twitter!
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Publication in Current BiologyPhD student Jake Bicknell has successfully published a paper in Current Biology in collaboration with his supervisors Zoe Davies and Matt Struebig. The paper, Improved timber harvest techniques maintain biodiversity in tropical forests, was published in December 2014 and examines how reduced impact logging minimises the damage to forests and the species for which they are home.
Niki Rust (PhD student)Rust, N. A., Nghikembua, M. T., Kasser, J. J. W. and Marker, L. L. (2014), Environmental factors affect swing gates as a barrier to large carnivores entering game farms. African Journal of Ecology. doi: 10.1111/aje.12188
Mark Rayan Darmaraj (Alumnus)D.M. Rayan, and M.Linkie. (2015), Conserving tigers in Malaysia: A science-driven approach for eliciting conservation
policy change. Biological Conservation 184: 18-26. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2014.12.024
Bob SmithBob was interviewed on Canadian radio this week to discuss his research on the use of drones to tackle rhino poaching. You can hear Bob’s comments 18 minutes into the CBC Radio broadcast.
Research Activitycontinued ...
QI Coming to KentAs part of the celebrations to mark Kent’s 50th anniversary a special edition of QI will be performed live at the Canterbury campus on Monday 9th February.
Regular panellists Alan Davies, Sandi Toksvig, Jo Brand and Phill Jupitus will be taking part, as well as QI creator and producer John Lloyd
Seats are sold out but you can still purchase tickets for the overflow screening in Woolf.
Kent Student AwardsRecognising and celebrating outstanding contributions to the Kent student experience.
Would you like to nominate someone?
Categories include contributions to: arts & culture; local community; sport development; environmental champion; college life; fundraising; and overcoming personal challenge.
For more information
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Upcoming Events DICE Annual Lecture
We are delighted to welcome Stanley Johnson (yes, Boris’ dad) to speak on;Forty years of international environmental policy: has it made a difference? A personal perspective
The lecture will take place on 26th February and will be preceded by a buffet reception.
For more information and to book your seat visit the SAC website.
Professor Bernard WoodHailing from George Washington University Professor Wood is a world-leading expert in human evolution and a newly-appointed Honorary Professor of SAC.
On Friday 13th February, 1pm, Swingland Room Professor Wood will be delivering a talk entitled:“The origin of Homo: What are we looking for?”
All staff and students of SAC welcome
Student Consultative CommitteeAll SAC student representatives are invited to attend the Student Consultative Committee. The Committee, chaired by a SAC student, facilitiates dialogue between the School management team, programme convenors and students. Therefore your reps need to hear from you on what is going well and where there are causes for concern. Make sure you give your feedback to your Course Rep well in advance of the meeting so that they can speak to other students in your cohort. Next meeting is: 18th March
Professor Philippe Descola
The social anthropology research group launched its 2015 seminar series with guest speaker Professor Philippe Descola, director of the Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale at the Collège de France, and currently a Visiting Professor at Cambridge.
Prof Descola is an internationally esteemed anthropologist and a a prominent figure on debates relating to the anthropology of nature and the environment. In his presentation “What is an Amazonian Landscape”, he examined the extent to which tropical swidden gardens are constituted as landscapes through a processes of transfiguration so that either through representation or arrangement they become iconic signs that stand for something else. We were quite fortunate to have had Prof Descola extend his stay so that we could host a dedicated PGR event and luncheon in his honour.
Workshop summary by Tony KnightPGR students from SAC were recently invited to spend a few hours with Prof. Descola for an unstructured ‘workshop’. The student-led session encouraged Descola to participate in a conversational-style discussion which quickly went beyond “Beyond Nature and Culture” to consider anthropology’s role in engaging with the anthropocene.
The dialogue, free-ranging at first, became more specific when prepared questions on the theoretical and epistemological considerations of the anthropocene were introduced. Descola’s considered responses brought to bear his substantial ethnographic experience in Ecuador as well as his earlier background as
a philosopher. Indeed, when Descola first encountered the Achuar indigenous people, he realised very quickly that his ‘anthropological tool-kit’ was inadequate to help him understand their ontological reality, so different than his own.
Confronting the uncertainties of the anthropocene is not so dissimilar. We agreed that understanding the changing relationship(s) between human society and the natural environment will become paramount. More importantly, though, the macro-level political institutions of any future anthropocenic ‘society’ will likely be quite different than what we are used to, and will certainly challenge the micro-fields of conventional anthropologists. Once again, we will find ourselves with an inadequate tool-kit, one that will need to be reframed significantly if we are to effectively engage with global-scale anthropocenic human-human and human-nature processes. Specifically, Descola believes that post-human / post-natural analytical frameworks proposed within his own work, and that of others such as, for example, Eduardo Kohn’s “How Forests Think”, have the capacity to be used to good effect outside of Amazonian animic societies. Perhaps they can form part of a new foundation for engaging with the increasingly complex and interconnected societies and ‘natures’ of the near-future.
Prof. Descola’s discussion was captivating and inspiring not just for those of us familiar with his work, but also for those who do not consider themselves to be involved in post-natural environmental anthropology. It served as a reminder that anthropology, when sensitively applied, can be stimulating and beneficial to many different actors, and highlights the need for even more transdisciplinary discussion and research as we move deeper into this anthropocenic future, a potentially challenging ‘Age of Man’ reigning over nature.
Recent EventSAC seminars are an opportunity to meet leading researchers
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Opportunities & Activities Radical Women Symposium Celebrating feminist achievements at the University of Kent.The symposium welcomes current staff and students but also activists and experts from the local community, former students from the Kent Women’s Studies programme, and visiting speakers. 21st March, 9.30am - 6pm. More information
Fascination of Plants Day18th May 2015Fascination of Plants Day was launched under the umbrella of the European Plant Science Organisation (EPSO) to encourage people around the world to celebrate the importance of plant science. For more information on the day and how to participate visit their website.
Volunteering in UgandaSAC student Tom Edwards working in partnership with charitable foundation CHEDRATom is recruiting a team of Kent students to head out to Uganda in Summer 2015. The activities are really varied and this is a wonderful opportunity to meet new friends, experience Uganda and make a difference to small communities. Find out more
Library SearchUniversity of Kent’s new resource discovery toolFind books and e-books, journals, articles, DVDs and other multimedia resources, theses, and many thousands of full-text e-resources and references. Discover a world of quality resources!Find out more
Change: How?100 visionaries, 100 stories, 100 days before the election!
A unique political festival being co-organised by Avi Heinemann & other SAC students on 8th February.
Avi writes:We have learnt that politics is not just what happens in parliaments, but also in every way in which we move and make the world, therfore we have invited doctors, teachers, cleaners, and people from the jobcentre. We have been introduced to film and imagery as ways to communicate, therefore we have invited the top slam poets, a band or two, and theatre-makers. We have learnt that this planet is our home, but also the home to an inconceivable diversity of lifeforms and ways of life, therefore we have invited a diverse group who are working on making the world a better place for us to share. Finally we have learnt that we need to get out there and do everything we can to enjoy and make the world a worthwhile place to live, so this festival will create a fun experience full of people who have demonstrated how to make a change.
Find out more and book your ticket.
All events and opportunities are provided for information. Their inclusion does not indicate that they are supported by or aligned with SAC or the University of Kent.
