Present committee members (elected at the 2007 conference) and their research interests.
Chair and Northern Network: David Howard
David is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Edinburgh, where he teaches an undergraduate course on Caribbean Societies. His research interests concentrate on the social and urban geographies of the Caribbean, with a particular emphasis on issues of racism and migration. His most recent research projects have been in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Belize. He is currently researching Dominican communities outwith the Americas. With Diana Paton and Christer Petley, he co-ordinates the Caribbean Research Seminar Series in the North, which, with the support of the Society for Caribbean Studies, aims to bring together Caribbean researchers in Scotland and the north of England.
Email: dhoward@staffmail.ed.ac.uk
Vice Chair: Christer Petley
Christer Petley is a lecturer in history at Leeds Metropolitan University. He has recently completed his PhD thesis on early nineteenth-century Jamaican plantation owners. His current research interests include the history of the British Caribbean in the nineteenth century, and he has taught courses on the history of slavery and emancipation in the Atlantic world, on abolition and emancipation in the British Caribbean and on the history of British colonialism.
Email: C.Petley@leedsmet.ac.uk
Treasurer: Diana Paton
Diana Paton is a lecturer in Caribbean History in the School of Historical Studies, University of Newcastle. Her research to date has been on Jamaica in the emancipation era. Publications include a monograph, "No Bond But the Law: Punishment, Race, and Gender in Jamaican State Formation, 1780-1870" (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004) and an edition of "A Narrative of Events, since the First of August 1834, by James Williams, an apprenticed labourer in Jamaica" (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001). She is now researching a project on the cultural politics of obeah. She is a co-organizer of the Caribbean Research Seminar in the North.
Email: diana.paton@ncl.ac.uk
Secretary: Henrice Altink
Henrice Altink is a lecturer in modern history at the University of York
where she teaches undergraduate courses on the post-emancipation Caribbean,
race and ethnicity in American society c. 1865-1924, and the history of
race and MA courses on British antislavery and Caribbean slavery. She
has published articles on representations of Jamaican slave women and
the workings off the Apprenticeship System in Jamaica in Slavery and
Abolition, Journal of Social History, Journal of Caribbean History, and
Social History. Her monograph entitled Representations of Slave
Women in Discourses on Slavery and Abolition, 1780-1838 has been
published by Routledge in 2007. More recently she has begun to examine
the construction of notions of womanhood in the African Jamaican community
in the period 1865-1938. She has given papers on this new research at
the Society for Caribbean Studies Conference (2003 and 2007), the University
of Warwick (2005 and 2006) and the Soundscapes Conference in Barbados
(2004) and has published articles on it in, amongst others, the Journal
of Caribbean History; the Journal of Social History and
ThirdSpace at http://www.thirdspace.ca/vol5/5_2_Altink.htm.
She is also interested in ideas about race mixing in the Caribbean and
the US in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. An article
on this issue will be published in a special issue on gender and sexuality
of Wadabagei (Spring 2007), of which she is an associate editor.
Email: ha501@york.ac.uk
Newsletter editor: David Clover
David Clover is the Information Resources Manager and Librarian at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London.
Email: David.Clover@sas.ac.uk
Website Editor: Michael Jagessar
Michael Jagessar (Queen's Theological Foundation & University of Birmingham) lectures in Inter-Cultural Theologies, Ecumenical, Interfaith and Multicultural Studies. He is especially interested in theological/religious themes as reflected/represented in Caribbean Literature, Caribbean Religions and Religiosity and the Dialogue of Cultures. Michael’s publications include: Full Life for All (Boekencentrum, 1997); Postcolonial Black British Theology (2006) and Black Theology in Britain: A Reader (2007). For more information, visit his webpage at www.caribleaper.co.uk
Email: m.n.jagessar@queens.ac.uk
Editor of the Annual Conference Papers: Sandra Courtman
Sandra Courtman was Chair of the Society from 1999-2002 and continues to edit the conference papers for the web site. She teaches literature and creative writing at The Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Sheffield (UK). She has publications arising from doctoral research for a thesis entitled 'Lost Years: West Indian Women Writing and Publishing in Britain c. 1960-1979. She recovered and edited a rare Jamaican woman's autobiography, out-of-print since 1969: Joyce Gladwell's Brown Face Big Master (Macmillan Caribbean Classic, 2003). As a result of editing the Society's conference papers online, she published Beyond the Blood, The Beach and The Banana: New Perspectives in Caribbean Studies (Jamaica: Ian Randle, 2004). For more detailed information please see my home page or email me.
Email: s.courtman@sheffield.ac.uk
Chair of Bridget Jones Sub-Committee: Kate Quinn
Kate Quinn is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow/Lecturer in Caribbean Studies at the Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London. Her doctoral thesis focused on cultural policy and nationalism in revolutionary Cuba and post-independence Guyana. She is currently working on a comparative study of Black Power movements and the state in the Anglophone Caribbean. Together with Mary Turner, she convenes the Caribbean Societies in their Regional Context seminar series jointly organised by the Institute for the Study of the Americas and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies.
Email: kate.quinn@sas.ac.uk
Postgraduate representative: Yvonne Slater
Yvonne is a PhD student at the Caribbean Studies Centre, London Metropolitan University. Her research interests are on the French Caribbean and Eastern Caribbean Creolophone islands. Her thesis focuses on Martinique during World War II. Yvonne has an MRes in Caribbean Studies and a BA(Hons) in Caribbean Studies and French, both obtained at University of North London (now London Met.)
Committee member: Paul Twinn
Paul has just submitted his PhD at University College London. He is a part time lecturer at the Open University where he teaches the 'Introduction to social science course.' His current research consists of examining the historiography of St. Vincent with special reference to local historians. He is also exploring the Chavez-effect on Vincentian politics and hopes to expand this regionally into the Eastern Caribbean.
Committee member: Ruth Minott Egglestone
Ruth Minott Egglestone completed a PhD in the Drama Department at the University of Hull. A passionate educator and teacher, this current research complements her wider project of documenting the importance and development of the pantomime tradition in Jamaica. Having observed Jamaican pantomime and theatre first-hand as she grew up, she seeks now as an academic to articulate the essential contribution of this form of popular theatre to the Caribbean aesthetic.
Committee member: Clare Newstead
Clare Newstead is a Lecturer in Human Geography at Nottingham Trent University. Her research focuses on changing political geographies in the British Caribbean and, in particular, the place of regionalism in relation to a range of political projects. Her current work focuses on the relationship between regionalism and neoliberalism. She teaches on globalisation, development and transnationalism.