Chairs for Plenary Sessions

Hilary Beckles

Professor Sir Hilary Beckles is a Barbadian. He received a BA (Hons) degree in Economic History, a PhD, and an Honorary Doctor of Letters, all from Hull University. He has served as the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Undergraduate Studies at the University of the West Indies; is the current Principal of the Campus at Cave Hill in Barbados; and is a member of the International Task Force for the UNESCO Slave Route Project and principal consultant for resource material in the schools programme. Besides working as an advisor to the UN World Culture Report, Sir Hilary Beckles is a consultant for the UNESCO Cities for Peace Global Programme.

He serves on the editorial boards of several academic journals including the Journal of Caribbean History, Sports in Society, and was 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. Sir Hilary Beckles has published over ten academic books, including “White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados 1627-1715”, “Centering Woman: Gender Discourses in Caribbean Slave Society”, “The History of Barbados and Natural Rebels: A History of Enslaved Black Women in the Caribbean”.

Toyin Falola

Toyin Falola, Ph.D., Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters and Fellow of the Historical Society of Nigeria, is a Distinguished Teaching Professor and the Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor in History at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of numerous books, co-editor of the Journal of African Economic History, Series Editor of Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora, Series Editor of the Culture and Customs of Africa by Greenwood Press and Series Editor of Classic Authors and Texts on Africa by Africa World Press.
He has received various awards and honors, including the Jean Holloway Award for Teaching Excellence, The Texas Exes Teaching Award, the Chancellor's Council Outstanding Teaching Award, the Cecil B Currey Award for his book, “Economic Reforms and Modernization in Nigeria”. He is the 2006 recipient of the Felix E. Udogu Africa Award, the 2006 Cheikh Anta Diop Award, the 2007 Amistad Award, and the 2007 SIRAS Award for Outstanding Contribution to African Studies.
He has an honorary doctorate from Monmouth University, USA and is the current Chair of the Herskovits Prize for the ASA, a member of the M. Klein Book prize for the AHA and the Gregory Prize for the Canadian African Studies Association.

Michele Johnson

Michele Johnson, PhD earned her Master’s and Doctorate degrees in Social History from John Hopkins University.  She is currently Associate Professor in the Department of History, York University where she has served as the coordinator of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Programme and serves as the university’s Affirmative Action Officer. Michele directs a new initiative, "Spotlighting and Promoting African Canadian Experiences" (S.P.A.C.E.) which seeks to highlight the presence and contributions of persons of African descent in Canada over the last 400 years. She teaches a number of courses which focus on "Blacks in the Americas".  Her research interests include issues of gender relations, race/radicalization, labour and domestic slavery and service in Jamaica/the Caribbean, the United States and Canada.  This has resulted in the publication of several articles and a book “They do as they please: The Jamaican Struggle for Cultural Freedom after Morant Bay”.

Joel Quirk

Joel Quirk is Deputy Director of the Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation, and RCUK Fellow in Law, Culture and Human Rights, University of Hull. His research primarily focuses upon the relationship between the history of slavery and abolition and contemporary forms of human bondage. Joel is the author of “Unfinished Business: A Comparative Survey of Historical and Contemporary Slavery” (UNESCO, 2009) and “The Anti-Slavery Project: From the Slave Trade to Human Trafficking” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). He is currently working on a number of research projects concerned with slavery and national identity, repairing historical wrongs, the state and mobility in Africa, teaching modern slavery, the definition of slavery under international law and the historical relationship between wartime enslavement and forced marriage. Joel is a member of the International Scientific Committee of the UNESCO Slave Route Project, where he serves as Rapporteur.
 

María Elisa Velázquez Gutiérrez

Dr. María Elisa Velázquez holds a Masters in History from the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) and a doctorate in Anthropology from the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (ENAH). She is a full time researcher at the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) where she studies Africans and their descendants in Mexico. Besides coordinating the Populations and Cultures of African Origin in Mexico Seminar, Dr. Velázquez teaches postgraduate History, Ethno history and Anthropology at Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia and Museums and Art Studies at the Universidad Iberoamericana. She also serves as President of the Scientific Committee of UNESCO’s Slave Route Project and Co-Director of the Project AFRODESC. Her numerous publications include Juan Correa´s Life, “Populations and Cultures of African Origin in Mexico”, “Women of African Origin in the Novohispanic capital”, “Portraits of Africans and Afro descendants in Guanajuato, centuries XIX and XX”, “Diaspora, nation and difference: African descendent populations in Mexico and Central America”.