The Fund, which was designed to provide support for students and academics who seek refuge in Europe and wish to continue their education and research at Kent, was launched at Medway on 5 October.
There was a Canterbury event earlier this year.
Attending the Medway launch were: Dr Anthony Manning, Dean for Internationalisation; Professor Rachel Forrester-Jones, Director of Tizard Centre; Professor Ian McLoughlin, Head of the School of Computing at Medway; and Dr Elizabeth Schachter, Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Comparative Literature at the University’s School of European Culture and Languages, among others.
Dr Schachter gave a talk on her parents’ experiences of fleeing Vienna during the Second World War. She also read from the letters her parents, both of whom were academics, wrote during the 1930s and 40s as new refugees to London.
The Kent Refuge Fund will build on the existing support the University provides for the Helena Kennedy Foundation ‘Article 26 Project’ and the Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA).
Further information and how to support the fund can be found here.
A Guardian Higher Education Network article written by an anonymous academic, ‘who fled Syria for Kent – and regained my life as an academic’, can be read here.