Professor Gordon Lynch, from the Department of Religious Studies, was interviewed by The Independent newspaper last week to preview a forthcoming exhibition at the V&A Museum of Childhood ‘On Their Own Britain’s Child Migrants’.

The exhibition will draw on Gordon’s research on child migration schemes that sent around 100,000 unaccompanied children from the UK to Canada, Australia and other Commonwealth countries from 1869 until the early 1970s.

‘While presented as being in the best interests of the child, the schemes were also intended to build up the British Empire with “good British stock”,’ explains Gordon in the article, which was published last Friday 14 August.

The exhibition will run at the Museum of Childhood from 24 October 2015 to 12 June 2016.

Read the full article.

An article by Dr Anna Katharina Schaffner, Reader in the Department of Comparative Literature, features on the front cover of this week’s Times Literary Supplement (TLS), published today, 21 August 2015, and is the lead article in the editorial.

The article, entitled ‘Our Sweet Tooth’, is an extended review of The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets (OUP, 2015), edited by Darra Goldstein, which compiles work from historians, chemists, restaurateurs and neuroscientists, to explore sweets and sweetness from a variety of different perspectives.

‘It appears that our predilection for sweetness is, like the incest taboo, a cross-cultural phenomenon, and that it is ubiquitous and, in all likelihood, innate,’ explains Anna in the article.

Read the piece online, pages 10-12.

The new Tribal SITS data system will ‘go live’ in September 2016. This will replace our current SDS, both on the Cressida and the web interfaces.

The current SITS Admissions system will become part of this data system and the entire web interface will be known as KentVision.

From next August/September, students will log on to KentVision to enrol, choose modules, access their timetable, view personal information, access PG progress reviews, view their marks, etc.

From next September, staff will use KentVision to register students, view module diets, enter and view marks, approve PGR supervisory meetings, process scholarships, etc.

You are invited to attend the next all staff presentation on Thursday 10 September from 10.30am to 11.30am in Grimond Lecture Theatre 1*. This project briefing will include the current overall project status, a timeline reminder and work strand information, as well as a range of example KentVision pages. There will be a question and answer session at the end of the presentation.

More information on the project, including links to documents and presentations, can be found on the project webpages.

Alternatively for more information, please contact Nicci Place at: N.J.Place@kent.ac.uk 

*There will be a briefing at Medway during the autumn term

Thanks to the University’s corporate membership, staff at Kent can benefit from priority booking, exclusive offers and members’ evenings at the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury.

Among highlights for the theatre’s new season are £3 off the top three prices for Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap (1-5 September), 20% off all saver performances for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (27 November – 10 January) and £3 off the Thursday evening performance of Anton and Erin: Just Gotta Dance (4 and 5 February).

As corporate members, Kent staff can also benefit from the same priority booking period as Marlowe Friends – Monday 24 August until 7 September, after which tickets go on sale to the general public.

The latest Marlowe season brochure is available at: www.marlowetheatre.com/page/3566.
The Marlowe Studio brochure can be seen at: www.marlowetheatre.com/page/3576.

Find out more about Corporate Members exclusive staff offers here: http://www.marlowetheatre.com/page/3718

Information on Corporate Members’ Evenings is available at: http://www.marlowetheatre.com/page/3719

The discount code for these ticket offers, Members’ Evenings and The Green Room (10% off food and hot drinks) is: COR16.

Unlimited email space, better integration with Lync, and a new Outlook Web App are some of the changes you’ll see as part of the staff email upgrade planned for the Autumn term. We’re going to be upgrading the ‘Exchange’ system that underpins the staff email service.

Business as usual during the upgrade

Most of us won’t notice any interruptions to service. If a service interruption is needed, it should be very short.

After the upgrade, what will be different?

Apart from the unlimited storage, which is fantastic news, there will be some new features for Outlook Web App (OWA) users. OWA will look a bit different and have better SharePoint and Lync integration.

If you use Kent email on your phone, and don’t have a PIN set on the handset, you’ll need to set one.

If you have an older phone/tablet, your access might stop working if it’s insecure (using it on our network is a breach of University IT regulations). You’ll need to update it if you want to carry on accessing the Kent network.

When will we find out more?

We’ll email you nearer the time to let you know exactly when it will happen, with full details about anything that’s new or changing.