Co-Directors
Focuses on contemporary Anglophone Caribbean literature. Leighan is primarily interested in how contemporary writers from the region engage with questions of gender, family, neo-coloniality, legacies of slavery and language.
A historian of colonial Latin America and the Caribbean. Bethan’s research focuses on slavery, cultural geographies, and the production of knowledge by people of African and indigenous descent in Colombia and the African diaspora.
An ethnographer and grandchild of the Caribbean whose work spans: Caribbean ecologies and hurricanes; the afterlives of Bristolian slavery; and Caribbean kinship and fatherhood.
Members
A volcanologist interested in the intersection between volcanoes, their eruptions and societies. Jenni’s research has been profoundly influenced by her experiences working on Montserrat during the early stages of the volcanic crisis. Her focus is on the reduction of risk in volcanic settings, and she has worked collaboratively on several projects in the Eastern Caribbean with researchers and communities who live near volcanoes.
Edson Burton
Is a writer and editor. He is the author of Black Crown: Henry Christophe, the Haitian Revolution and the Caribbean’s Forgotten Kingdom (2023) and Haiti: The Bradt Travel Guide (2016). A former writer for Lonely Planet, he has authored two editions of their Caribbean Islands guidebook and co-authored three editions of their Jamaica guidebook. His research focuses on the afterlives of the revolutionary Kingdom of Haiti and its transnational connections.
Emma Crowley
Has published widely in the field of Anglophone Caribbean literature, with significant contributions to the fields of literary history and culture, recovery research of women authors, and Caribbean literary archives. Alison has an ongoing commitment to exploring and expanding literary histories. She has given the National Library of Jamaica’s Distinguished Lecture and the University of Guyana’s Edgar Mittleholzer Memorial Lecture.
Marie-Annick Gournet
Cleo Lake
Jose Lingna Nafafe
Zakiya McKenzie
A Country Man whose research explores: anti-racism and social justice in teacher education; teacher identities and rural Black communities across Europe.
Connor Ryan
Amy Saleh is a Black woman of African Caribbean descent (with ties to Antigua and Guyana). She taught English at secondary school phase before joining the University of the West of England as a Senior Lecturer in Education. Her research interests include the study and impacts of Black British literature in schools, racial and critical literacies, anti-racist pedagogies, and Black Studies in Education. In 2023, Amy established the ‘Lit. Legacies’ project alongside a small group of English teachers aiming to reduce barriers to studying Black British literature in secondary schools by creating a scheme of work for Odimba’s, ‘Princess & The Hustler’.
Shawn Sobers
Researches the cultural histories of migration, especially from South Asia to Britain, the Caribbean and the wider Indian Ocean world with a focus on indentured labour and its afterlives.
Has over 20 years’ experience of Caribbean genealogical study of the various diasporas. Melsia’s PhD focused on historic intersections of race, gender, class, and colourism, amongst mixed-heritage people in the British colonial world. Her research interests include gender, kinship ties, family history, colourism, and violence against women within the enslaver/enslaved dichotomy.