News Releases

Fourth Dame Eugenia Charles Distinguished Public Lecture: Who Paved the Way for Eugenia Charles?

For Release Upon Receipt - November 19, 2009

St. Augustine


The University of the West Indies Open Campus Dominica, in collaboration with the National Bank of Dominica Ltd. and H. H. V. Whitchurch & Co. Ltd., is pleased to announce the Fourth Dame Eugenia Charles Distinguished Public Lecture in the series to be delivered by Professor Verene A. Shepherd, Professor of Social History, The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica.

The Lecture will take place on Thursday November 19, 2009, commencing at 7 pm, at the Conference Room of the Fort Young Hotel in Roseau, Dominica. Professor Shepherd will speak to the topic, Who Paved the Way for Eugenia Charles? Historicising Caribbean Women's Political Activism. This Distinguished Lecture Series was inaugurated in December 2006 to coincide with the launching of an edited book on Dame Eugenia entitled, Enjoying Power: Eugenia Charles and Political Leadership in the Commonwealth Caribbean by Professor Eudine Barriteau and Professor Alan Cobley as co-editors.

Professor Shepherd, a Fellow of the Cambridge Commonwealth Society (FCCS), holds the B.A. and M.Phil. degrees in History from the UWI and the Ph.D. in History from the University of Cambridge. She joined the staff of the Mona History Department in 1988 as Temporary Assistant Lecturer and obtained a permanent post as Lecturer in 1989. She was promoted to Senior Lecturer and awarded tenure in the academic year 1994/95 and elevated to the rank of Professor in October 2001. She is the second woman to obtain a Chair in the Mona History Department since Elsa Goveia, a gap of over 40 years.

In the light of the foregoing as well as her many years involvement in outreach and public education, her delivery of public lectures and participation in conferences and seminars at universities in Austria, Australia, Azerbaijan, Canada, Colombia, England, Germany, Ireland, Madeira, Mauritius, New Zealand, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Spain, the Netherlands, the USA, and South Africa, Professor Shepherd is eminently qualified to offer a critical and methodical treatment of the topic, as the Dominican and regional public seeks to further understand the impact of this Caribbean icon and first female Prime Minister in the Caribbean, Dame Eugenia Charles.

The public lecture series, among other aims, seeks to keep alive the memory of a National Hero of First Rate and reminds the Dominica population at home and abroad of Dominica’s remarkable potential in having produced a citizen who was able to hold her own on the world stage and gain the respect of all, which translated into the indisputable meteoric rise to prominence of a 291 square miles island in the Caribbean, previously little-known.

His Excellency the Acting President of Dominica, Dr. Edward I. Watty will be in attendance.

 

About the Open Campus

The newest campus of the 60-year-old University of the West Indies (UWI) was formally launched in Antigua & Barbuda in June 2008. The UWI Open Campus is an amalgamation of three former departments of the UWI - the Office of the Board for Non-Campus Countries & Distance Education (BNNCDE), the School of Continuing Studies (SCS), the UWI Distance Education Centre (UWIDEC), and the Tertiary Level Institutions Unit (TLIU). The UWI Open Campus offers multi-mode teaching and learning services through virtual and physical site locations across the Caribbean region. There are currently 42 site locations of the Open Campus in the English-speaking Caribbean. The UWI Open Campus offers an open and flexible learning environment for pre-university, professional development, undergraduate and graduate courses and programmes and other services both online and in blended format. We offer a three-tiered registration structure to suit particular needs and educational backgrounds. The system allows our students to move and transfer within the entire University system to reach the required standard. All programmes and courses at the Open Campus have been designed in direct response to a need for high quality continuing and professional development in many key areas in the Caribbean and global markets.

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