Cultural exchange session – Mexico, South Korea and Britain in dialogue

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Dr Brian Wallace teaches two modules on British governance to South Korean and Mexican students on King’s Summer Programmes.

This July, King’s College London Summer Programmes hosted students from Mexico and South Korea for parallel courses on governance in the United Kingdom. A highlight of both courses was a joint session between the two cohorts, in a cultural exchange to facilitate reflection on the themes they had been exploring. One of the key aims of both programmes is encouraging students to use our learning sessions and the experience of residence abroad as a vantage point from which to consider their home countries via a series of themes applicable across borders. The students could both reflect on what they had learned about Britain and apply these reflections to their respective homes.

The session was designed primarily to spark dialogue and the exchange of ideas and experiences among our six mixed student groups, each composed of five South Korean and four Mexican students. After a brief introduction laying out their shared course themes and the shared London experiences they had all likely been encountering as tourists, our first ice-breaking conversation session asked the students within their groups to simply introduce themselves, their home town or city, and their favourite or least favourite thing about London. Our second strand explored the idea of common ground. Drawing on the ‘cultural exchanges’ theme, I gave our students a brief presentation on cultural and political links between Britain and their home countries, introducing cultural products such as art and food along with official occasions such as state visits, with their political rhetoric stressing the shared history and values of the nations. The second breakout conversation session asked the students to respond to this idea of common ground – was this reflected in their experiences visiting London? Did they feel their nation’s culture was familiar in Britain? What were the greatest similarities and differences? As these discussions were ongoing, I toured each group’s table and sampled their conversations and conclusions. There was a wide range of opinion, but one common theme which emerged among the students was interest in the ‘export versions’ of their national cultures they had encountered in London.

Our final conversation session asked the students to produce a more formal response in the form of a lesson plan poster presentation. Each group was assigned one of the common themes of the two programmes – national identity, monarchy, the empire and Commonwealth, government and Brexit, the British press, and cultural ‘soft power’. We then asked them to take on the role of teachers, composing a lesson for their fellow students back in Mexico and South Korea. How would they explain these themes? What case studies, objects, or sites would they use? What did they think their students would find most surprising about these themes in Britain? With one Mexican and one South Korean ‘teacher’ as co-presenters, the session encouraged students to not only demonstrate the knowledge they had acquired in our learning sessions, but to translate it for a home audience as well as considering it in an international context. The student groups responded creatively and thoughtfully, using diagrams and illustrations to lay out the similarities and differences between the three nations. Common features between the three nations were identified in the shared structures of government, while the greatest differences were identified in the realms of journalism and soft power.

The idea of cultural exchange is central to the aims of our summer courses and this session proved to be an invaluable venue for putting it into practice, offering a space for our student cohorts to respond to the themes of the course and give their own reflections on their London experiences. At the culmination of our students’ learning sessions on British themes, it productively reversed the student-teacher roles and encouraged them to discuss and delineate how these issues resonated at home. Finally, introducing the Mexican and South Korean cohorts to each other in order to engage in this reflective work generated a creative energy and excitement within the session which was reflected in the enthusiasm of their conversations and presentations.

The way we learn on summer schools

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Thais Russomano, MD, is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre of Human & Applied Physiological Sciences, part of the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine’s School of Basic & Medical Biosciences.
Thais teaches summer school students about body systems and how humans adapt when exposed to hostile environments.

 

If asked at the age of 16 what I wanted to be when I ‘grew up’, the answer university professor would never have crossed my mind. I knew what I wanted to be, it was simple – for as long as I could remember I dreamt of becoming an astronaut. This would be a difficult career path for anyone to follow, however, coming from a country (Brazil) that didn’t at that time even have a Space Agency made the task as difficult as climbing Mount Everest blindfolded! I wish at that stage of my life I’d had the opportunity to experience a course like the King’s Summer programme.

Exposure to material taught by an international professor in a ‘university-type’ form would certainly have given my confidence a boost and allayed many of the doubts I had about studying abroad and at a higher level. Nonetheless, I planned my journey, completing medicine in Brazil, then facing my fears and going oversees for a 2-year MSc in Aerospace Medicine in the US, and a PhD in Space Physiology at King’s College London, before working at the German Space Agency (DLR).

My academic career began at a university in Brazil, where I established the Microgravity Centre, a pioneering Space Life Sciences Research Centre, but my links with King’s always remained strong, and I eventually became the Deputy Course Director/Senior Lecturer of the Space Physiology & Health MSc course. Another constant in my life was dedicating spare time to teaching school-aged students about the life and works of astronauts during space missions.

Therefore, when asked to participate in teaching for the King’s College Summer Programmes, I was delighted to accept, as, from my own student experience, I knew the benefit this kind of interaction brings – I see it as a two-way win-win situation for both students and professors, both of whom encounter different learning styles and gain from an exchange of cultural values, which broadens perspectives and adds to personal and professional growth.

The design of the Summer Courses fosters this interaction of tutors/students and provides an enriching learning environment. Students gain a great insight into what life would be like studying at university level, and possibly experiencing for the first time a British way of delivering knowledge. This opportunity also gives a special experience to us as professors, entering a highly multicultural environment, bringing with it challenges as to how best to engage these young minds, but at the same time making the teaching-learning process more stimulating and special.

Given the short length of the courses, they can be no more than simply ‘taster’ experiences for both sides, however, the enthusiasm and curiosity of the students is evident from their willingness to participate in activities, and from their questions, which become more probing and frequent as the week progresses and confidence grows. And it is exactly this growth in confidence, this exposure to professors of a different culture, and this opportunity to mix with a different way of doings things that is the most invaluable lesson of the week for students, opening their eyes to potential new horizons.

Likewise, teaching pre-university students, and especially those from a culture for whom English is not their native-tongue, provides lecturers with a reminder that sometimes we must adapt our skills to better communicate the content of our classes, making the language we use more accessible, building on logical reasoning and employing good analogies that help in the understanding of more complex ideas. I am reminded that these skills are important within our practice at King’s, which is by its very nature, a very international university, with more than 40% of its student population drawn from 160 countries.

For me, the experience of teaching young students on King’s Summer Programmes is gratifying and enriching; something new to add to my lifelong learning portfolio. For the students, I hope they find their pre-university programmes inspiring and motivational experiences, bolstering their self-belief and turning the first page of their academic journey.

Personifying the King’s experience

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The teacher’s role in summer business education

Dr Andrew McFaull is a Teaching Fellow in Accounting and Finance in the King’s Business School. In the Summer, Dr McFaull teaches Business Management, International  Business, Accounting and Finance in London and Hong Kong.

Over the past few years of delivering summer schools here at King’s, it has become clear to me that the role of the tutor is much more than just teaching and is about delivering a memorable learning experience. The challenge for us as tutors and those who support us as we seek to offer a great summer school is to be aware of what kind of learning experience we want to offer.

To answer this question, I believe we need to view it from our students’ perspective and ask ourselves why would someone be willing to travel great distances, often at considerable expense to enrol for only two to three weeks in one of our short summer courses? As a business tutor, I would put this in business speak and term it our value proposition. Yet, what is it? In essence, why do large numbers of students come from across the world to our summer schools each year? It seems to me the only way to deliver the best possible programme of summer learning is to exceed our students expectations and to do that, we must first understand why they enrol on a summer school course.

It’s clearly not us personally as tutors that attracts the students. Regardless of our doctorates and other various learned credentials, it is safe to assume that none of our students will have heard about our teaching and/or research prior to enrolling upon our courses. Instead, it is almost certainly the opportunity to gain an education from an esteemed institution with a global reputation that attracts students in their hundreds year upon year. Therefore, we can perhaps conclude that the role of a summer school tutor is to personify the anticipated experiences and related expectations that comes with receiving an education from somewhere like King’s College London.

“I notice how much more heterogeneous the expectations of our summer students are.”

What complicates this process further is that this personification of a King’s education is not the same for all students and this is something I have increasingly observed of as I have been delivering summer schools on behalf of the business school. When I contrast my summer school teaching with our conventional undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, which I also teach upon, I notice how much more heterogeneous the expectations of our students are and we only have two or three weeks to fulfil and
hopefully exceed these expectations.

“Helping achieve long-term personal and professional goals”

As a broad generalisation, some enrol on our summer school programmes to advance their CVs and ultimately their future careers. Others are visiting us to be challenged intellectually and want a scholarly experience from one of the world’s leading universities. Then there are those enrolled on our summer school programmes who might be termed educational tourists, who are attracted by studying in different city or country for a few weeks. All these expectations are perfectly reasonable. Yet, the predicament we face when seeking to meet students’ expectations and hopefully exceed them to deliver a good summer school, is how do you deliver one course which meets many expectations?

The answer hopefully lies in the fact that each of these expectations mentioned before are not directly in conflict with each other and therefore by delivering in one area, we are precluded from delivering in another. Ultimately, in my mind, our goal in the summer school is to build a programmes of learning which is intellectually challenging, but simultaneously brings in both the King ’s and wider London experience and allows students to achieve their long-term personal and professional goals.

This brings me back to my original point that the role of summer school tutor is much more than teaching, it’s about cultivating a memorable learning experience both inside and outside of the classroom and this needs to be co-produced with the student, because ultimately it’s their learning experience.

Addressing the Signs of the Times

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Dr Huw Dylan is a Senior Lecturer in Intelligence Studies and International Security in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Dr Dylan is also a Visiting Research Professor at the Norwegian Defence Intelligence School, Oslo.

 

One of the most exciting things about the King’s Undergraduate Summer School is the variety of approaches to teaching and learning that students will experience. This reflects both the scope of subjects on offer, but also the energy tutors put into creating engaging learning environments. This entry, building upon our colleague Dr Diana Bozhilova’s blog post on teaching international relations in this series, offers a brief introduction to our approach to teaching Politics and the Media.

For those of us interested in politics and international relations it seems that not a day goes by without some controversy or other concerning what is the truth of a particular situation making the headlines in the press. From the competing narratives offered to the electorate in the BREXIT referendum, to the myriad debates concerning President Trump and words and deeds, to the running series of debates between Russia and the West over a number of issues, including the shooting down of MH17 to Russian involvement in east Ukraine, matters of strategic communication, allegations of propaganda, and charges of ‘fake news’ have come to dominate several areas of our political discourse. This course aims to place many of these issues in a deeper historical context, and to consider carefully how information and messages have been utilised by political power throughout history to further their goals.

Our teaching is based on our experience in the Department of War Studies. This department encourages an interdisciplinary and creative approach to studying conflict and war and all associated phenomena. We aim to combine teaching of core concepts and ideas, such as exploring the main theorists or thinkers of propaganda and strategic communications, in tandem with the conflicts or issues that they sought to influence at the time. And then to examine how these ideas resonate today in our contemporary debates. So, we will begin with the ideas of Gustav le Bon, and propaganda in the age of the Two World Wars, before moving on to the Cold War and the post 9/11 world. Students will engage deal with theory and practice, setting the scene for many of the issues we the class will consider during the latter part of the course.

The learning outcomes for this short course on Politics and the Media are centred upon the development of an understanding of key subject matter and fostering critical thinking. The class will consider the core components of propaganda and strategic communication narratives in various case studies. Many of these case studies involve campaigns that aimed to convert or entrench the political stance or the voting intentions of a large body of people, and have become contentious. Analysing the construction, delivery, and impact of these various campaigns will leave students equipped to more effectively engage with such campaigns in future, in particular with regard analysing and challenging the competing claims of ‘truth’. A key component of developing these critical skills will be an active consideration of the modern information environment and information technology, and how they both facilitate the propagation and the challenge of key messages.

Dialogues on Disability

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‘In many areas of the globe, opportunities for disabled students to meet, study and advance thinking on disability and inclusion beyond the confines of national borders are nearly non-existent.’ To change this institutions are developing programmes and working collaboratively to face the worldwide discrepancy of this subject.

An example of innovative short term programming, the Dialogues and Disability programme started life in 2013 between Delhi University and King’s, as a collaboration between international Summer Programmes and King’s Disability Advisory Service. The programme focuses on improving the university experience for disabled staff and students and explores topics from inclusion across aspects of university life, mentoring and pathways to success after graduation. This annual programme brings together disabled students and disability professionals, from around the world, to explore the challenges and opportunities faced by disabled people with respect to accessibility and inclusion.

‘This is an example of internationalisation and disability services have entered into a symbiotic exchange of perspectives and best practices.’

Please visit our webpage to know more about the Dialogues on Disability programme.

What distinguishes a Summer School student?

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Dr Nicola Kirkby is a ‘Literature in the City’ tutor on King’s Undergraduate Summer School.
In SummerTimes she is sharing her observations as an academic who this year taught on a summer school for the first time.

 

It’s a habit among critical thinkers to look for comparisons and contrasts. Throughout the King’s Summer ‘Literature and the City’ module, I prompted my students to explore differences between urban and rural experience, between London and their home town, between Dublin in the 1900s and Paris in the 1920s. From a pedagogical perspective, I was also drawing my own comparisons. Having taught a similar module, ‘Writing London’ in the Department of English at King’s for several years now, I found leading this summer school course for the first time in 2018 a refreshing counterpoint.

How do summer school cohorts differ from their term-time counterparts?
While there is much overlap (these are high-achieving undergraduates and alumni from universities across the world), I found that our lectures, seminars, and site visits had their own distinct dynamic that has impacted my teaching practice all year round.

Curiosity

Because they are open to students from any academic discipline, one of the most significant unifying pre-requisites for King’s Summer Programmes participants is curiosity about the course itself. English Literature majors were working alongside scholars with backgrounds in psychology, policy, modern languages, health science, and physics. This was invaluable in a course that interrogated what it means for people from all walks of life to live intersecting, interconnected lives. Our discussions may have focused predominantly on London, but such diversity in approach and experience meant that we were always bringing this city into dialogue with other global capitals, other networks, and other ways of understanding and organising shared space.

Thanks to such curiosity, the Summer School provided an ideal environment for exploring experimental ideas. At first, I think that students coming from more didactic learning environments found opportunities to challenge established theoretical approaches a little disorientating. But this approach fits well, both with the primary aim of literary studies: to encourage independent critical thinking, and with summer school learners themselves, who, in their choice to up sticks and study overseas for three-to-six intense weeks are more than equal to taking initiative.

Commitment

There’s nothing quite like leaving your life behind to embark on a few weeks of focussed study in a new place. Attendance throughout the summer school was sky-high in a way that is unparalleled in full-year courses where students often juggle responsibilities to home and work throughout the teaching semester. What I had not anticipated, and what I was utterly delighted to find was the tireless motivation of this group in our daily seminars, lectures, and site visits to places have changed London’s literary landscape. ‘Literature and the City’ is a fast-paced and thought-provoking module, and this year’s cohort impressed me by exploring London, Paris, and even Dublin on their own alongside our Monday-Friday classes.

Togetherness

The final distinction is a simple yet important one. Working alongside one another in an intense, discussion-led course helps summer school students build collaborative closeness in a way that would take much longer in a regular undergraduate module. By the end of the programme my ‘Literature and the City’ cohort had expanded their network, forging lasting connections with peers from across the world.

Teaching International Relations for dynamic audiences

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Dr Diana Bozhilova, Teaching Fellow Summer Programmes, brings her lively discussions on the theory and practice of International Relations to our London programmes through her annual contribution to the King’s Summer School Programmes. 

 

Political events “crowd” our lives with increasing dynamism. This leads to greater interest in the study of International Relations (IR) as a means to explaining ethical questions, consequentialist and deontological reasoning. As a result, normative IR is still very relevant but how do we teach it within short courses for highly mobile and technologically astute young audiences for whom time is of the essence?

Core concepts

My experience of teaching IR has been one of focusing on core concepts and methods. Short courses allow for selecting “relevant” blocks on which to scope attention in order to critically appraise a particularly impactful development in international relations. Take Brexit, Russia or China for example – separately, they challenge aspects of the liberal international order established during the “American” century and contribute to the sense that something rather big is afoot. For normative IR, this means a conceptual and methodological shift being under way.

Roadmaps

The learning outcomes for short courses in IR centre on developing critical thinking and analytical capacities that enable students to transform information flows into knowledge. I would never forget how on one of my travels to India and whilst occupied with thoughts about the impact of technology on the study of IR, a friend from Mumbai remarked: “Google cannot help find your slippers in the temple.” Technology is an information enabler but normative IR provides roadmaps that transform data flows into meaningful building blocks.

Application

Games and simulations increasingly infiltrate IR pedagogy. On the one hand, those opposed to such dynamic teaching models emphasise their inevitably reductionist approach to understanding normative IR through diminution of variables, thus confining discussions to basics at the expense of the vastness of paradigms and approaches that exist in the discipline. On the other hand, their great utility lies in adapting static theories to dynamic teaching models. This has a particular advantage for international audiences who would like to see how theories apply within different geographic and institutional settings. Simulations can involve structural constructs from diplomacy and negotiations, economic development and governance reforms, management of warfare and environmental crises. They are well suited to short courses, dedicated sessions, and blended learning models.

We are the city: King’s Summer Programmes in London

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Dr Sarah Williamson, Director of Summer Programmes

Cities, like universities, are the sum of their parts and London, like King’s, is very much a product of its people. London’s citizens have long built bits on, growing the city outwards and upwards not on any grid system, but expanding it organically from its medieval footprint. London is not a city that was built then the people moved in; they built it from the inside out.

That’s the kind of city London is. It has a mindset that resists definition and a momentum that evolves in ways that are too exciting to be corralled. Just how London has been shaped and honed has become even more apparent in the last 20 years. Glorious, majestic spaces, like Somerset House, have been reclaimed as public spaces, becoming areas for public thinking and doing. Those reclaimed public spaces now influence public discourse and from there the city self-defines its future development. A city is a thinking space and the university within the city is an ideas lab, where those thoughts are grouped together to become ideas and shaped into actions.

Everyone who comes to London comes knowing it has a life blood that its citizens both create and draw from. This is what makes it such a strong magnet for creative thinkers and therefore creative learners. To be connected with and submerged into the flow of the city was always an elemental component in the makeup of our academic summer programmes at King’s. London is our classroom not just because it is our location; it’s because it is our inspiration and definition. It’s an ever-greater co-contributor to the summer classes in our sector-leading programmes.

For those seeking a starting point more profound than a traditional tourist route, having a chance to explore the city through applied study is strongly attractive. No student focused seriously on their academic career doesn’t think very carefully about how they, as global citizens, as global thinkers, will need to understand and use the city in their future as they become workers in their fields. But how to do this if you live elsewhere? What can you do to count yourself amongst the number of Londoners making waves in the world if your postcode is usually well beyond the M25? One neat answer is to join a summer programme at King’s. Short courses, run on King’s campuses over the summer season give a compact but powerful injection of intellectual rigour and dynamic personal development embedded so firmly in London’s ecosystems that your credentials as a Londoner become as established as they do as a King’s alum.

All of our 1,800 summer alumni this year will have explored their subjects with the help of London. Academic excursions, guest speakers from across London’s industries enrich the London campus-delivered academic content of courses. From the Victoria & Albert Museum, historic Fleet Street or crowded Brixton. A diverse range of places and encounters await the summer student and life-long Londoner alike. London can be a gateway to the wider world through its London headquarters of global powerhouses like the UN Refugee Agency, teachers on our Human Rights undergraduate summer school. Our popular and long-standing summer module “Museum of London: Curating the City” with daily sessions at the museum led by its curators, is a passport behind the scenes of one of the capital’s most innovative museums. What do the collections—ranging from art to architecture, fashion to film, music to media, giant fatberg!—tell us about London over the last century? What sorts of histories do these collections tell? What stories do they leave untold? Who are the people choosing these collections and making particular stories public? What is the impact of their decisions on London’s present-day reputation as a centre of creativity and cultural exchange?

For an intellectually challenging, often assessed summer school, this is never about glorified tourism. With its highly international King’s summer student population from more than 50 countries, London connections need to be academically meaningful and relevant. Rather, it is the case that lecturers explore their subject through the prism of London in undergraduate-level courses such as London & Film, where London as a cinematic city, the divergent spaces of London, and the capital’s relationship to film genres are explored in turn. Students reflect on the relationship between London, the advent of moving images and the birth of the cinema industry; the cultural role of cinema within the capital through the strength of its institutions, among them Film London, the National Film Theatre and the British Film Institute. London is both, a ‘realist’ and ‘fantasy’ wonderland. The evolution of London (as relayed on film) as a thriving urban space marked by increased gentrification, cosmopolitanism and architectural redevelopment is considered as well as the restaging of London’s cityscape as the set for blockbuster cinema.

Inviting new audiences to King’s, Dr Alana Harris, Lecturer in Modern British History and convenor of a group looking specifically at the integration of London in the learning experience, is this year for the second time leading a King’s Summer Weekend course with The National Archives. This weekend course is for everyone who wants to expand their research into their family tree. It combines instruction on practical researching techniques with academic insight into how key historic events shape stories across generations. Those that are interested can read more about this in a recent King’s SummerTimes blog post written by Mark Pearsall, one of the course contributors from among The National Archives staff. He describes how this summer collaboration led to a podcast on the Public Record’s Office history in what is now King’s splendid Maughan Library. The city defines its history through its people’s stories. The university defines the city through its understanding of those stories and equips its citizens to continue to draw out their ideas of how the city will evolve in the future.

Alongside the large King’s summer programmes, some of the biggest in Europe, a group of cultural intelligence courses offer invite student groups from King’s university partners to explore London’s people, institution and power in innovative ways. The rationale behind these courses is powerfully simple: they use the unique dynamism of the metropolis to empower students to reflect on their own agency and take steps to be empowered in their own lives back home. Long term Londoners come into the classroom and change perceptions. New Londoners soak up inspiration and ideas and carry a bit of London’s esprit de corps with them wherever they go next. We are the city and the city is us. #everybodywelcome #summeratkings

The start of a new term

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Dr Sarah Williamson, Director of Summer Programmes

Late June. Birdsong early in the morning. Sunrise by 5 am. Lazy evenings that go on and on to the point where you realise you should have gone to bed an hour before. (But it’s light till so late!) People start dropping into conversation that they are heading off on their holidays soon. The tabloid press is obsessed with swimwear. And universities across the world are readying their halls to welcome their summer students.

Undergraduate Summer School students exploring London with their tutor

At King’s, now in its 9th year, the summer school has grown into a full portfolio of programmes. More than 1,800 people are poised to enrol and embark on what at any other time of the year would be described the start of term. They are coming from all over. The summer has always been a moment in the year for new experiences and adventures. And for cerebral beings, that can mean relocating for a few days to several weeks and flexing their intellectual muscles in the community of learning that is King’s College London.

I’d like to say that there is something for everyone, but if the Internet has taught us anything it’s that there’s some pretty select areas of interest in human society! So, I’ll simply say that there’s an impressive range of classes on offer; a range that works hard to give the world a taste of the research and learning that is the fabric of King’s everyday. A range designed to peak the interest of you out there in the ether and beckon you in to join in the discussion.

“Lifelong friendships with people from across the globe” – Louise

From Healthcare and Technology to Ancient Greek, Psychology to Politics, King’s College London is in the happy position of being a specialist-generalist research institution, so we are luckier than most when it comes to putting together options for summer students. This year’s Pre-University Summer School participants certainly think so! 600+ of them, all high school students aged 16-18, will be heading to class to explore engineering, politics, science, history and literature, and so on. That’s 600 developing minds filled with ideas and opinions and ready to shake things up. Where better to do so than at one of the best universities in the world?!

Summer Education Abroad students in Berlin

Education abroad courses are also in the portfolio. King’s has long championed studying abroad as a stalwart of an internationalised curriculum and this year we kicked off the summer study season with a course that uses Berlin as its classroom. 50 students studying for King’s degrees flew out to explore civic engagement Berlin-style, taking a journey through the social, economic and political change in Germany. A key component of this course and many of our other summer courses has been exploring ideas around personal agency and asking how people exercise their personal agency to bring about changes in their communities. Not only is this line of inquiry a direct arrow into the heart of our university motto, “In the service of society” but also heralds King’s institutional strategy around “Service” that’s due to be published in the new academic year.

Pre-University Summer School students with their course ambassador

Education is a cornerstone of personal empowerment and there’s nothing like a truly international classroom to bring the richest of learning experiences to campus. One of the fascinating areas of any discipline is understanding transnational perspectives and their application within research hypotheses. And the summer classroom, with its intensive learning format (the summer is only so long!) leads the way on active learning. Increased contact time and an emphasis on experiential learning via practitioner speakers and academic-led site visits means that learning is intense and truly flavoursome. What the short course format of a summer education course loses in extended personal reflection time, it gains in peer-to-peer debate and a fearless critical thinking-infused classroom.

So, come July 2nd, take a moment to consider what you could be learning in summers to come. At King’s we never stop exploring. And if that idea resonates with you, you know where you should be. #summeratkings #everybodywelcome

Unveiling the historical connection between King’s and The National Archives

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Mark Pearsall of The National Archives works in Collections, Expertise and Engagement. He worked previously in Birmingham Local Studies library and city archives. He has worked in several departments at The National Archives since then, mainly in reader services and records departments. During that time he has produced various guides and finding aids to the records and a number of publications including “Family History Companion”, and co-authored “Family History On The Move” and “Immigrants and Aliens”. His research interests include nationality and citizenship, parish history and administration and local government and county administration. As part of his job he give talks to family and local history groups, and other organisations and societies about the records in The National Archives and how to access them.

Participants in the 2017 Family History summer weekend at the Maughan Library

King’s College London and The National Archives came together last year to hold a family history summer weekend in August. The first day was held at The National Archives in Kew and the second day at King’s. Maughan Library in Chancery Lane is the building that housed the former Public Record Office (PRO), predecessor of The National Archives until 1996. Whilst collaborating on the King’s Summer Weekend with Dr Alana Harris from King’s History Department, we developed the idea for a podcast on our institutional history in the old places that King’s now occupies. The podcast will be available from autumn to all King’s students, used in history teaching, but also available as outreach material to anyone in the King’s community. Last summer, we went to look at the Weston Room, which used to house the PRO museum, but which was built on the site of the medieval Rolls Chapel.

The Maughan Library, King’s College London

King Henry III founded the house and church of the converts (Domus Conversorum) in 1232 in the street called ‘Neustrate’. Chancery Lane was originally called the ‘New Street’ and was made by the Knights Templar to run from their Old Temple in Holborn to the New Temple by the river Thames. The buildings were erected in 1232-33 and two chaplains appointed and the first Jewish converts admitted. In 1371 William Burstall was appointed keeper of the house of converts and he repaired the house, chapel and other buildings at his own expense. Burstall also became keeper of the rolls of Chancery, and in 1377 the house of converts was granted by Edward III and confirmed by Richard II to the keeper of the rolls of Chancery. From then on the keeper of the rolls was also the keeper of the house of converts. The house became the residence of the keepers or Masters of the Rolls until 1837.

The Weston Room, the Maughan Library, King’s College London

The house of converts was pulled down and a new house for the use of the Master of the Rolls was built under the direction of architect John Campbell between 1717 and 1724. The Rolls Chapel was also repaired and improved at the same time. The Rolls House as the official residence of the Master of the Rolls became the main office of the new Public Record Office in 1838 and the Rolls Chapel had long been used for the storage of Chancery rolls. Most of the records were moved out on completion of the first block of the new record office in 1856. When the Public Record Office was extended in 1895 it was decided to demolish the Rolls Chapel. In its place a new museum was built of the same dimensions, and incorporating some of the monuments from the chapel. Three of the large monuments were re-erected, two of them in their former positions. Three memorial tablets were re-affixed to the walls and some of the old glass added to the windows on the south side. The burial vaults below the floor of the old chapel were enclosed in concrete. The new museum opened to be public in 1902 and is now the Weston Room of the Maughan Library.

Participants in the 2017 Family History summer weekend reviewing documents at The National Archives

King’s Summer Programmes and The National Archives will be holding their second family history summer weekend on Friday 3rd and Saturday 4th August 2018. The course as last year is designed to stimulate and challenge the participants and take them beyond the computer and the basic resources of birth, marriage and death certificates, census returns, and parish registers. Much can now be done online to build up a basic family tree of names and dates taking you back at least to the beginning of the nineteenth, or the late eighteenth century. Going further back can depend on the survival of original records and knowing what resources are available to the researcher to augment the basic names, relationships and dates. The summer weekend will provide research techniques and academic insight.

On day one at King’s, Audrey Collins of The National Archives and Dr Alana Harris of King’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities will cover the fascination of family research to find the stories behind the names and dates, exploring key themes such as class, professions and occupations, migration and place, putting the family in its social context. At lunchtime we will take participants on a visit to the Maughan Library. After lunch, Dr Denise Syndercombe-Court will discuss the value and the shortcomings of DNA analysis in what proved last year to be a very stimulating and thought provoking session and should be so again.

The National Archives in Kew

Day two will be held at The National Archives, Kew where I will talk about undertaking research in the archives and there will be a behind the scenes tour. Audrey and Alana will run a session on female ancestors and how to trace their lives and put them into a social context. The afternoon will be given over to research in the archives and surgeries to discuss specific topics and research methods. We aim to inspire people to undertake further and more fruitful research into their family histories.

The registration deadline is 20 July 2018. For further information please visit the webpage.