As Full Term begins, and our community reassembles after the Christmas Vacation bringing individual memories of many personal joys and perhaps some sadnesses from the holidays, this seems the right time for us, together, to remember the many communities devastated by the tsunami on 26 December.

I know that many parts of the University and Colleges are planning to hold commemorations. Amongst those events I would like to draw your attention to a University-wide, inter-faith Act of Remembrance to be held at the University Church, Great St Mary's, on Sunday 13 February 2005 at 3pm, which I hope will provide an opportunity for the whole community to come together. Further details will be publicised in due course.

Cambridge is an international university with countless connections – academic but also personal – around the world. Members of the University may have lost their lives in the catastrophe, although, to date, we seem miraculously to have been spared – but an event of this scale is inevitably felt keenly here, and we will do what we can to support members of the University community who have been affected.

Immediate disaster-relief efforts are drawing to a close, but the longer-term impact will require our consideration and attention for many years to come. In consultation with partner universities and the international networks to which we belong as an institution, we are exploring how the University of Cambridge can best help the region as part of the reconstruction phase of the international response. In due course we will publicise – through the Reporter, student newspapers and the University Newsletter – what the University is doing, and how individual members of the University can help.

Alison Richard
Vice-Chancellor

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