Our History
On August 1st, 2012, the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics (DMLL) was born, when we decided to split off from the Department of Liberal Arts in order to better serve the nation, region and global community through languages and literatures. Of course, the UWI has been teaching modern languages and linguistics since long before 2012—as early as 1975, the St. Augustine campus was noted to have a Department of Languages and Linguistics, and our parent department, the Department of Liberal Arts, was founded in 1996. People from all over the world—Brazil, Colombia, France, Mauritius, Venezuela and the UK, among many others—have come together to form our family of academic and administrative personnel that keep the DMLL ticking and our students learning.
For us, serving the national, regional, and global communities means keeping in touch with the needs and wants of these communities. With our outreach programmes and research, we have worked with and helped the nation’s teachers, immigrant communities, the Deaf and hard of hearing communities, and documented endangered languages. When the COVID-19 Pandemic forced the St. Augustine campus to close physically to students, we embraced the technology of our times to deliver our courses fully online, so we could keep meeting our students where they are, both literally and metaphorically. Determined to remain active, we have continued to host virtual webinars, open days, forums, and recently, a research week, ‘Language and Social Justice in the Caribbean’, featuring work from local, regional and international academics as well as DMLL students.
As we start moving towards a new, post-pandemic future, we are looking forward to new challenges, greater achievements, and fresh faces. Over 200 graduates have walked our halls in the last decade—will you join them?
