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Prof. Sir Hilary Beckles
Professor Sir Hilary Beckles was born
in Barbados in 1955.
He attended secondary school in Barbados and Birmingham in the U K. He
received his higher education in the United Kingdom. He graduated with a
BA (Hons) degree in Economic History from Hull University in 1976 and a
PhD from the same university in 1980. In 2003, he received an Honorary
Doctor of Letters for outstanding work as a scholar from his alma mater.
He joined the History Department at the University of the West Indies (UWI),
Mona Campus in 1979 as a lecturer; in 1984 he transferred to the Cave
Hill Campus in Barbados and was promoted to a personal professorship in
1993 at age thirty-seven, the youngest in the history of UWI. Professor
Sir Hilary has served the University as Head of the History Department
and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities.
In 1994 he won the first University of the West Indies Vice Chancellor’s
Award for Excellence in the field of research. In 1998 he was appointed
Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Undergraduate Studies and returned to the Mona
Campus. In August 2002 he returned to Cave Hill as Pro-Vice-Chancellor
and Principal.
Professor Sir Hilary Beckles was awarded Knight of St. Andrew, the
highest national honour in Barbados, for his contribution to “Higher
Education, the Arts, and Sports” in 2007.
Professor Sir Hilary is an internationally reputed historian and serves
on the editorial boards of several academic journals, including the
Journal of Caribbean History, Sports in Society, William and Mary
Quarterly, the flagship journal of the Institute of Early American
History and Culture, Williamsburg Virginia, and an international editor
for the Journal of American History. He is also the Chair, Board of
Directors of the University of the West Indies Press. He is Director of
Cable & Wireless Barbados Ltd., as well as Sagicor Financial Inc, the
largest Caribbean financial comglomerate. He has lectured at
universities in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. He served for
five years as a member of the Cultural Committee of His Royal Highness,
Prince Claus of the Netherlands.
Professor Sir Hilary has published more than ten academic books,
including:
1. Liberties Lost: The Native Caribbean and Slave Societies (Cambridge
University Press, 2004), White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados
1627-1715 Tennessee University Press, 1990);
2. Centering Woman: Gender Discourses in Caribbean Slave Society; (James
Currey Press);
3. The History of Barbados (Cambridge University Press, 1990);
4. Corporate Power in Barbados: Economic Injustice in a Political
Democracy, 1990;
5. Natural Rebels: A History of Enslaved Black Women in the Caribbean
(Rutgers University Press, 1989);
6. A two-volume work on West Indies cricket, The Development of West
Indies Cricket: Volume One, The Age of Nationalism; and Volume Two, The
Age of Globalisation, (Pluto Press 1999). The Development of West Indies
Cricket was described in Wisden Cricket Monthly, August 1999 as “the
most important cricket book ever written”.
7. A Nation Imagined: The First West Indies Test Team: The 1928 Tour
(Ian Randle Publishers, June 2003). This book was commissioned by the
West Indies Cricket Board to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of West
Indies Cricket.
He is a member of the International Task Force for the UNESCO Slave
Route Project and is principal consultant for resource material in the
schools programme. He is also Consultant for the UNESCO Cities for Peace
Global Programme. He is an advisor to the UN World Culture Report. In
2002 he led the Barbados national delegation to the UN Conference on
Race in Durban, South Africa. In recent years he has given several
lectures on the challenges facing higher education thinking and planning
in the Caribbean. He is co-author of a recent book entitled, “The Brain
Train: Quality Higher Education and Caribbean Development,” a monograph
published in April 2002. He chairs the UWI Task Force on the
Globalisation and Liberalisation of Higher Education.
Professor Sir Hilary is a keen cricketer and researcher of cricket
history and culture. He is the founder and Director of the CLR James
Centre for Cricket Research at Cave Hill Campus; and was a Director of
Caribbean Cricket World Cup 2007 Inc. He is overall coordinator of
sports for the four campuses at UWI.
Courtesy of The
University of the West Indies Cave Hill, Barbados
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