The University of the West Indies (UWI), originally University College of the West Indies, is a public university system established to serve the higher education needs of the residents of 18 English-speaking countries and territories in the Caribbean: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turks and Caicos Islands. Each country is either a member of the Commonwealth of Nations or a British Overseas Territory. The aim of the university is to help "unlock the potential for economic and cultural growth" in the West Indies, thus allowing improved regional autonomy. The university was originally instituted as an independent external college of the University of London.
Raziah Ahmed is a former Senator of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
Vena Jules Ph.D. is an educator from Trinidad and Tobago. She was the new Senior Programme Executive for Curriculum Development at the Catholic Religious Education Development Institute (CREDI) (2009) Dr. Jules was appointed president of CREDI in July 2011. At the graduation ceremony in November 2013, in recognition of her contribution to CREDI, Dr. Jules was awarded "the honour of being the first Fellow of CREDI". A CIDA scholar and graduate of Queen's University, Canada, Dr. Jules obtained her Ph.D. at the University of the West Indies (UWI). Prior to her CREDI appointment, she was a senior lecturer at the School of Education of the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, where she served from 1983 to 2008. In 2004, she was one of four lecturers who was awarded the Guardian Life of the Caribbean Premium Teacher Award for excellence in teaching at the University of the West Indies. Hers is an extensive career of commitment, spanning some 48 years at all levels of the education system in Trinidad and Tobago.
Norman P. Girvan was a Jamaican professor, Secretary General of the Association of Caribbean States between 2000 and 2004. He was born in Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica. He died aged 72 in Cuba on 9 April 2014, after having suffered a fall while hiking in Dominica in early 2014. He had been a member of the United Nations Committee on Development Policy since 2009, and in 2010 was appointed the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's personal representative on the Guyana-Venezuela border controversy. He was Professor Emeritus of the University of the West Indies (UWI).
Sir Edwin Wilberforce Carrington, is the former Secretary-General of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), serving from 1992 to 2010.
Violet Eudine Barriteau,FB, GCM, is a professor of gender and public policy, as well as Principal of the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill. She was also the president of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) from 2009 to 2010, and she is on the advisory editorial boards of Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International, published by SUNY Press, and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, published by University of Chicago Press.
Gordon Rohlehr was a Guyana-born scholar and critic of West Indian literature, noted for his study of popular culture in the Caribbean, including oral poetry, calypso and cricket. He pioneered the academic and intellectual study of Calypso, tracing its history over several centuries, writing a landmark work entitled Calypso and Society in Pre-Independence Trinidad (1989), and is considered the world's leading authority on its development.
Barbara Evelyn Bailey is an educator, writer and gender studies scholar from Kingston, Jamaica. In addition to her education work, she has represented Jamaica at numerous conferences and assemblies regarding women's rights. In 2008 she was elected by the state parties as a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.
Rhoda Reddock is a Trinidadian educator and social activist. She has served as founder, chair, adviser, or member of several organizations, such as the Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA), the Global Fund for Women, and the Regional Advisory Committee of the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS established by UNAIDS. In 2002 she received the Seventh CARICOM Triennial Award for Women, was Trinidad and Tobago's nominee for the International Women of Courage Award in 2008, and was honoured in her country's National Honour Awards ceremony in 2012 with the Gold Medal for the Development of Women.
Feminism in the Caribbean refers to the collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending a state of equal political, economic, cultural, and social rights for women in the Caribbean.
Elsa Ann Leo-Rhynie OJ is a retired Jamaican academic and university administrator who is a professor emerita of the University of West Indies (UWI). She is a former principal and pro-vice-chancellor of its Mona, Jamaica, campus.
Marjorie Ruth Thorpe is a Trinidadian academic, lecturer, former diplomat and the first woman to have chaired the Public Service Commission (PSC) in Trinidad and Tobago. She is also a development practitioner with a particular interest in gender issues.
Gema Ramkeesoon was a Trinidadian and Tobagonian social worker and women's rights activist who was one of the early pioneers of the women's movement in Trinidad and Tobago. She was honored for her social service work as a member of the Order of the British Empire in 1950 and received the gold Hummingbird Medal from Trinidad and Tobago in 1976.
The Coterie of Social Workers is a women's organization, established in 1921 in Trinidad and Tobago, British West Indies to engage in empowering women as well as providing benevolent assistance to the poor and disadvantaged. It was the first organization to target for membership, middle-class women of colour and focus on the needs of working class women, regardless of their marital status and was the leading women's organization in the country from its establishment through the 1940s. Though it has branches throughout the country, its headquarters is located at 3 Longden Street in Port of Spain.
University of the West Indies at Cave Hill is a public research university in Cave Hill, Barbados. It is one of five general campuses in the University of the West Indies system.
Maureen Warner-Lewis is a Trinidadian and Tobagonian academic whose career focused on the linguistic heritage and unique cultural traditions of the African diaspora of the Caribbean. Her area of focus has been to recover the links between African cultures and Caribbean cultures. She has been awarded multiple prizes for her works, including two Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Awards, the Gold Musgrave Medal of the Institute of Jamaica, and was inducted into the Literary Hall of Fame of Tobago.
Helen Pyne-Timothy was a Jamaican feminist literary critic and academic, who was a founder and the inaugural president of the Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars (ACWWS), a contributing editor of the journal MaComère, and the author of the 1998 book The Woman, the Writer and Caribbean Society.
Kamala Kempadoo is a British-Guyanese author and sexology professor who lives in Barbados and Canada. She has written multiple books about sex work and sex trafficking and won awards from the Caribbean Studies Association and the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality for her distinguished and lifetime achievement in the sexology field.
Angelique V. Nixon is a Bahamas-born, Trinidad-based, feminist writer, artist, academic and activist.
Leith Lorraine Dunn is a Jamaican sociologist, writer and academic.
