Jason Allen-Paisant is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the School of Modern Languages & the Centre for World Literatures at the University of Leeds whose work is mainly in the field of performance studies. His research considers the ways in which key categories of Western epistemology (the human, the self, identity, consciousness, etc.) are intertwined with (both shaping and reflecting back) the history of modern Western imperialism. This focus is tied to his interest in modes of embodied performance in the history of the African diaspora and how these function as counterforces to colonial violence. He is the editor of a forthcoming book rooted in the conference “Memory and Performance in African-Atlantic Futures” which he organised at the University of Leeds in August-September 2018.
Phanuel Antwi works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at University of British Columbia. He writes, researches and teaches settler colonial studies; Black Atlantic and diaspora studies; Canadian literature and culture since 1830; critical race, gender and sexuality studies; and material cultures. He has published articles in Transition Magazine, Small Axe, Interventions, Affinities, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies and Studies in Canadian Literature, and he is completing a book-length project titled ‘Currencies of Blackness: Faithfulness, Cheerfulness and Politeness in Settler Writing’.
Caree Ann Marie Banton is an Assistant Professor of Afro-Caribbean History at the University of Arkansas and is jointly appointed in History and African and African American Studies. She received a MA in Development Studies from the University of Ghana in July 2012 and completed her doctoral work at Vanderbilt University in June 2013. Her manuscript titled, “More Auspicious Shores”: Barbadian Migration to Liberia, Blackness and the Making of an African Republic published by Cambridge University Press (2019) explores the continuities and mutabilities of experiences of freedom, citizenship, nationhood and blackness through Barbadian migration to Liberia.
Ronald Cummings teaches queer and postcolonial literatures at Brock University in Ontario, Canada. He holds a PhD in English from the University of Leeds and was the 2013–2014 Postdoctoral Fellow in Critical Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University. His work has been published in the Journal of West Indian Literature, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Small Axe, sx salon and Transforming Anthropology. His research focuses on the field of critical Maroon studies. He is currently completing a book-length manuscript titled Queer Marronage and Jamaican Writing.
Anna Kasafi Perkins is a Roman Catholic theologian/ethicist by training. She is currently the Senior Programme Officer, Quality Assurance Unit, The University of the West Indies, and adjunct faculty at St. Michael’s Theological College, where she served as Dean of Studies (2004–2007). Included among her several publications are Justice as Equality: Michael Manley’s Caribbean Vision of Justice (Peter Lang 2010), Justice and Peace in a Renewed Caribbean: Contemporary Catholic Reflections (Palgrave Macmillan 2012; contributor/co-editor) and Quality in Higher Education in the Caribbean with University of the West Indies Press (2015; contributor/editor).
Nalini Mohabir is a postcolonial geographer at Concordia University, Montreal. She teaches feminist and postcolonial migrations. Her work has been published in Small Axe, Land Use Policy, and the Journal of West Indian Literature.
Mimi Sheller, PhD, is Professor of Sociology and founding Director of the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy at Drexel University in Philadelphia. She is President of the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility; Founding Co-Editor of the journal Mobilities; and Associate Editor of the journal Transfers. She is author or co-editor of nine books, including Mobility Justice (Verso, 2018); Aluminum Dreams: The Making of Light Modernity (MIT Press, 2014); Consuming the Caribbean (Routledge, 2003) and Citizenship from Below: Erotic Agency and Caribbean Freedom (Duke University Press, 2012); and Democracy After Slavery: Black Publics and Peasant Radicalism in Haiti and Jamaica (Macmillan, 2000).
Jacqueline Wigfall is an independent scholar of African Diaspora who previously served as Assistant Professor of ESL/English at the College of Micronesia, Yap Campus in the Federated States of Micronesia.
