{"id":5745,"date":"2020-01-24T11:57:39","date_gmt":"2020-01-24T11:57:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/?p=5745"},"modified":"2020-09-08T15:07:58","modified_gmt":"2020-09-08T14:07:58","slug":"semester-1-in-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/2020\/01\/24\/semester-1-in-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Semester 1 In Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The academic year 2019\/20 has been incredibly busy thus far.\nAs Semester 2 begins we are taking a moment to take stock of the highlights of\nsemester 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the beginning of the academic year the teaching team all blogged<\/a>\non how stimulating and sometimes daunting it can be to teach politics in times\nof upheaval. We were right. The semester was dominated by the concerns of a\nno-deal Brexit on 31 October, which did not transpire, the snap General\nElection on 12 December and the increased urgency of calls to deal with the climate\ncrisis. These events (and non-events) shaped the teaching in our British, EU and\nglobal politics modules in different ways. We had plenty to debate in our\nclasses and we were kept on our toes rewriting lectures, minutes before class\nbegan some weeks! Dr Sarah Lieberman featured regularly in local and national news\ncoverage explaining what on earth was happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We continued with the learning and teaching innovations\nwhich were praised in recent external examiner reports. Students on the\nContemporary Political Thought module were involved with running MOVEMENT\u00b2<\/a>\na very successful outreach event sponsored by the ESRC Festival of Social\nSciences. Students really enjoyed the simulated election hustings assessment as\npart of the second year British Politics module and the innovative Shut Up and\nWrite Sessions for the Individual Study module which are running for a second\nyear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guests also came to speak to our students during timetabled teaching sessions. Stephen Fiddler, UK and Brexit editor of the Wall Street Journal came to speak to students in Dr Soeren Keil\u2019s Jean Monnet EU modules. The Parliamentary Studies class had a special session<\/a> with Professor John Curtice when he visited the university as part of the Vice Chancellor\u2019s Public Lecture series.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Students also had opportunities to engage with wider\nextra-curricular activities. Our MPM series had a busy schedule<\/a>.\nThe highlight was the Hustings for the General Election, where the prospective\ncandidates for the Canterbury seat faced a packed Augustine Hall and set out\ntheir case for election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our Careers Conference<\/a> on 4 December had extremely positive feedback from students. We are always thankful to our graduate community for their willingness to give up their time and be such positive role models to current students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our PhD students had a busy semester too. Dr Paul Anderson\nand Dr Amina M\u2019Lili graduated in September. Razia Shariff and Max Stafford both\nhad successful vivas in December. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Finally, just before the Christmas break students on our\nJean Monnet accredited EU modules went on a whirlwind trip\nto Brussels<\/a>. They packed a great deal into a short trip, meeting representatives\nfrom the Commission dealing with space policy, enlargement and neighbourhood\npolicy and the Integrated Crisis Response Team. Students were very enthusiastic\nabout how the trip helped them to link the ideas discussed in the classroom to practical\nrealities of policy implementation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After such a busy first semester some may wonder what will sustain us in semester 2. We were sad to say goodbye to Dr Lucas Van Milders at the end of December but we will have a new lecturer in post in the next couple of months. However, if there is one thing that the CCCU Politics and IR team are renowned for it is our boundless enthusiasm and energy. We are ready and raring to go for another action packed semester!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The academic year 2019\/20 has been incredibly busy thus far. As Semester 2 begins we are taking a moment to take stock of the highlights of semester 1. At the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4437,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,21,33],"tags":[1769,2378],"class_list":["post-5745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-news","category-teaching","tag-politics","tag-teaching-and-learning"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"authorName":"Laura Cashman","featuredImage":false,"postExcerpt":"The academic year 2019\/20 has been incredibly busy thus far. As Semester 2 begins we are taking a moment to take stock of the highlights of semester 1. At the […]","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4437"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5745"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7290,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5745\/revisions\/7290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}