Sir Hilary Beckles
Sir Hilary Beckles
Full visit: March 24-28, 2025
Mini visit: September 16, 2022
- Vice-Chancellor, University of the West Indies-UWI
- ADW-PAL term: 2022-28
- Subject Area: Humanities
- Faculty host: Judith Byfield (Professor, Dept. of History)
- Faculty co-host: Ernesto Bassi (Associate Professor, Dept. of History)
Sir Hilary Beckles is a distinguished scholar, internationally acclaimed historian of the Caribbean, and a revered reparations advocate, who has served as the Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI) since 2015, and as the Chairman of theCaribbean Community (CARICOM) Reparations Commission since 2013. Equally regarded as an esteemed global public activist in the field of sustainability, social justice and minority empowerment, Beckles has also served as an inaugural member of the United Nations Science Advisory Board on Sustainable Development and an advisor for the UN World Culture Report. A Professor of Economic and Social History at UWI since 1991, Beckles has been a leading voice in higher education recognized for his contributions to the field of economic history, as a pathway in exploring reparatory justice for slavery and the history of slavery and colonialism in the Caribbean.In 2021, Beckles was named as a Visionary Expert for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s(UNESCO) International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (IESALC) Futures of Higher Education project, aimed at generating innovative and imaginative ideas about the future of higher education, from a global perspective.
Beckles is an author of thirteen books, eight plays, and over 100 peer reviewed essays covering an extensive range of issues including the history of slavery, gender relations in the Caribbean, sports, and popular culture. The breadth of Beckles’s scholarship and its generalizability to many fields has captured the interests and imaginationsof a vast array of audiences, including numerous departments, programs, and audiences across campus, as well as regional community organizations, particularly as it relates to the matters of social justice and a just future. Through the professorship, Beckles aims to provide public engagement opportunities through a series of lectures, seminars, and workshops, for comparative discussions about slavery and its legacies in the United States and the Caribbean, as well as opportunities to imagine strategies for reparations in the US; discussions made even more urgent in the wake of protests following the murder of George Floyd.
A highly sought-after speaker, Professor Beckles has lectured extensively throughout Europe and Asia. Professor Beckles has been invited by the Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Caribbean Studies Initiative to give an Einaudi Distinguished Speaker Series lecture, which he is scheduled to present in September 2022. Beckles received his higher education in the United Kingdom and graduated in 1976 with a B.A. (Hons) degree in Economic and Social History from The University of Hull, and a Ph.D. from the same university in 1980.