Verene A. Shepherd
Verene Shepherd is Professor of Social History (The UWI, Mona Campus) and the former University Director of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies. She is currently the Director of the Institute for Reparations Research at The University of the West Indies. Professor Shepherd has published widely on Jamaican economic history during slavery, the Indian experience in Jamaica, migration and diasporas and Caribbean women's history. A prolific author, Prof. Shepherd is editor/compiler, author, co-author and co-editor of 16 important books, among them, Transients to Settlers: The Experiences of Indians in Jamaica; Women in Caribbean History; Maharani’s Misery: Narratives of a Passage from India to the Caribbean: Engendering Caribbean History: Cross-Cultural Perspectives; Livestock, Sugar & Slavery: Contested Terrain in Colonial Jamaica; Working Slavery, Pricing Freedom: Perspectives from the Caribbean, Africa and the African Diaspora; Slavery without Sugar and I Want to Disturb My Neighbour: Lectures on Slavery, Emancipation and Post-Colonial Jamaica. As a scholar activist, Professor Shepherd is a member of several international organisations. In 2014, Professor Shepherd guided UN committees into the General Assembly's declaring 2015-2024 the Decade for People of African Descent. In 2015, she was elected to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. She is the first national of the Caribbean Community to serve on the CERD. Professor Shepherd has been the recipient of several awards, among them the Order of Distinction, Commander Class from the Govt of Jamaica for her work in History and Gender Studies; the Jamaica National Heritage Trust Award for her work in History and Heritage and the Africana Studies distinguished African Award from Florida International University.
