Lecturer in US History, Dr Erik Mathisen, has been awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for his new research project, ‘Free Labour & Emancipation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic World’.

Dr Mathisen shares: ‘”Free Labour & Emancipation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic World” examines how ideas about free labour (selling our work for a wage) became wrapped up in struggles over the abolition of African slavery, the emancipation of enslaved peoples, and the chaotic expansion of capitalism in the nineteenth century.

‘Focused on the British Caribbean, the United States and Cuba, the project will chart the history of how the problems of emancipation exposed the contradictions of free labour, not only in places where slavery dominated, but in the lives of working people throughout the Atlantic World. As I hope this project will show, the age of emancipation was one in which freedom and coercion were shaped by the ideas and actions of a broad range of people: missionaries and political economists, but also enslaved people on plantations, day labourers, domestic servants, factory workers and more. Free labour is also intimately connected to a global race for empire and labour in the last decades of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This project ties these threads together, showing how the Age of Emancipation built the foundations of the Age of Empire.

‘It occurred to me that the precarity of work in so much of our economy now, as well as the terms of debate about how work is talked about in popular culture, makes a virtue of the freedom and flexibility to work but obscures the coercion that so many face. Students this year who are taking my Special Subject, “The Age of Emancipation,” have also played a huge part in the project. Spending time thinking through their questions each week has helped me enormously to clarify my own ideas. I hope that when it is finished, they will see some of their fingerprints on parts of the book too!’

The Talent and Organisational Development Team are happy to share a number of upcoming learning opportunities, that are bookable via your personal Staff Connect Dashboard.

In partnership with Canterbury Christ Church University, and facilitated by Planned Future, we will be offering two webinars as follow:

Pre-Retirement Financial planning: Wednesday 5 May 2021, 10.00 – 13.00.

A half day webinar aiming to give participants knowledgeable advice in regards to all aspects of planning for retirement, looking at areas such as finance, health and lifestyle.

Mid-Career Financial planning: Wednesday 5 May 2021, 14.00 – 16.00.

This short webinar covers a range of issues relevant to planning your financial affairs, both now and for the future.

As part of Mental Health Awareness Week 2021, we will be running the following session:

Mental Health training for Line Managers: Monday 10 May, 10.00 – 13.00.

The aim of the workshop is to enable and encourage managers to develop a management style that strikes the right balance between the needs of the individual/team and the needs of the business.

You can book all these webinars via Staff Connect and you will receive a Zoom invite a day or so before the webinar takes place.

If you would like any further information, please get in touch with the team: ldev@kent.ac.uk

From Professor Richard Reece | DVC Education and Student Experience

As many of you will be aware, the KentVision project team are currently working hard behind the scenes to get our new student data system up and running for next week. Launch preparations are going well, and a number of key stages in this process have already been completed. However, while we remain on track to have the system live next week, we now expect this to be slightly later in the week due to the need to confirm that everything is working as it should be before the system becomes fully operational again.

Where we are up to so far  

The initial data migration went well, and the team are currently going through the process of carefully validating key systems records to ensure that the new system is operating smoothly. This process is almost complete for areas including finance, assessments and PGR admin, with core student record admin also well on the way to being finalised.

What we still need to do  

All Student Support and UKVI data is being migrated at the moment, with the team working through the weekend to continue these final steps and carry out all necessary checks. Validating this will take some time, so we expect all critical work to be complete by Monday afternoon – the team will then need a couple of days to bring all of the systems back up before they are available to use. The only exception will be Student Notes and Academic Advisors, which we will now migrate shortly after the system is back live to avoid any further delay.

We will provide a further update for staff and students on Monday, when we expect to have further progress to report, along with confirmation of the expected launch date next week*. All key internal stakeholders have already been informed so they can update plans for next week and we have arrangements in place so we can continue with key admissions activity in the meantime.

I am sure you all appreciate the careful and detailed work needed to complete a data migration project of this scale, and so thank you all for your patience as we carry out these vital final steps.

With best wishes,

Richard

Professor Richard Reece | DVC Education and Student Experience

[UPDATE 21.04.21: KentVision now expected to go live on the afternoon of Friday 23 April 2021]