2009 Saint Lucia Studies Emancipation Lectures

The Folk Research Centre, in association with the Cultural Development Foundation presents the 2009 Saint Lucia Studies Emancipation Lectures.
Keynote speaker is Professor Humphrey Regis.
Other lecturers are Mr. Laurent ‘Jomo’ JnPierre and Dr. Kyneata Joseph.

The Saint Lucia Studies Conference was organized by the FRC in 2004 to provide the opportunity for persons doing research into various aspects of Saint Lucian life to present their findings. Where it has not been possible to host a full Conference a series of lectures has been organized. From the beginning, the Cultural Development Foundation has partnered with the FRC in the hosting and presentation of the lectures.
This year all the lecturers are Saint Lucian.

Humphrey A. Regis has studied print and broadcast media; mass communication theory and research; and the relationships between mass communication and history, culture, development, and immigrant adjustment. He also has studied the Caribbean community, the world African community, and the global community. He has used insights from these studies in his development of perspectives and conducting of studies on the relationships between mass communication and contemporary cultural imperatives. To the study of the relationships, he has made contributions that experts call independent, authoritative, inter disciplinary, and even “seminal.”
Regis has coordinated an undergraduate course, an undergraduate sequence, a graduate program, a Program in Liberal Studies, and a Department of Journalism and Mass Communication. He has served on a council responsible for undergraduate liberal arts requirements; served on a committee responsible for the handshaking between colleges in a university; coordinated a Conference on Relationships Among Members of the World African Community; and edited scholarly journals that focus on African American and World African Community issues. He uses mass media to teach insights into the relationships between mass communication and a number of other subjects he integrates in his work -- history; culture; orientation to reference groups; location in global social space; cultural definition, continuance, and change; “globalization;” and “globalism.”
His lectures for the 2009 Saint Lucia series are entitled “Our ‘Mindemancipation’ and foundations of Christianity”. Apart from his main lecture in Castries, he will be speaking in a number of communities around the island.

Mr. Laurent ‘Jomo’ JnPierre has been involved in environmental issues and ethnobotanical research for many years. He migrated to North America in 1994. He has more than 10 years experience working as an environmental anthropologist and curator of a small herbarium and library (in the Caribbean and the United States). He holds an International Diploma in Herbarium Development Techniques (including plant taxonomy) from Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. From Hartwick College, NY, USA, he obtained an undergraduate BA degree in Anthropology with minors in Biology and Religion. His Ethnobotany MSc. (University of Kent at Canterbury, UK) dissertation focused on the sustainable use of Coccothrinax barbadensis a palm used for broom-making in the Caribbean. He is now known as the “broom-man.” A Laurent World Broom Collection is housed and named after him at the University of Michigan.

Mr. JnPierre will speak on the role and place of grounds provision in socio-economic development.


Dr. Kyneata Joseph is a graduate of the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College and St. Joseph’s Convent. She continued her education at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus, where she read for a BA degree in History. It was in her final year of undergraduate study that she became interested in the history of Indians in Saint Lucia. The recipient of a Post Graduate Scholarship from the UWI in 2001 Dr. Joseph began extensive research on the Indian community in St Lucia. Her research culminated in a dissertation entitled “A History of Indian Indentured Labour: The Saint Lucian Experience, 1859 to 1903” for which she was awarded a doctoral degree in 2008. Presently, Dr. Joseph lectures Caribbean History at the University of the Southern Caribbean, and at the University of West Indies Open Campus e-learning programme.
Her lecture will be based on her research into the arrival of East Indians in St. Lucia.

Following is a programme of the lecture series.

Monday 27th July 2009 Prof. Humphrey Regis, Our "Mindemancipation" and Foundations of Christianity @ CDF Conference Room 7 pm.

Tuesday 28th July 2009 Dr Kyneata Joseph, The Emancipation Project: The Great East Indian Experiment @ CDF Conference Room 7 pm.

Wednesday 29th July 2009, Mr. Laurent JnPierre Rediscovering the Role of Ground Provision in the Quest for Socio-Economic Empowerment during Pre and Post Emancipation in the Caribbean Islands. @ CDF Conference Room 7 pm.

Thursday 30th July 2009, Prof. Humphrey Regis Our “Mindemancipation” and Foundations of Christianity. @ St. Isidore’s Hall, Soufriere.