SUNDAY 2 JUNE 2019 – UWI TODAY
15
OUR PEOPLE
Makandal Daaga
Scholarship
creating lawyers who
are change agents
In response
to issues
such
as corruption
and structural
i n e q u a l i t y,
the Faculty of
Law at UWI’s
St Augustine
C amp u s i s
s e e k i n g t o
create lawyers
who will be
me a n i n g f u l
change agents
w i t h i n t h e
C a r i b b e a n .
It is doing so
through the
M a k a n d a l
Daaga Scholarship in Law.
Professor Rose-Marie Belle Antoine, Dean
of the Faculty of Law, is passionate about the
Makandal Daaga scholarship and the “tremendous
opportunity for the scholars who are given the
tools of law to further their important work in
activism and social development. It also furthers
the goal of the Faculty of Law and The UWI to
create greater access to the Law programme based
on more broad-based, relevant criteria. Both lead
to building better, more socially centred lawyers
who will strive to reconstruct our societies for the
greater good, promoting ideals of egalitarianism
and justice.”
The Makandal Daaga scholarship is an equal
opportunity scholarship where applicants may be
of any age, gender, race, or CARICOMnationality.
It targets candidates who would not normally
qualify for entry into the Bachelor of Laws (LLB)
programme based only on academic qualifications.
Applicants must be persons with a discernible
record of advocating for positive social change
in their communities through concrete work on
issues of justice, equality, or democracy, whether
in an NGO, governmental, regional, or individual
capacity andmust also satisfy at least the minimum
matriculation requirements of The UWI.
Kareem Marcelle, the first recipient of the
Makandal Daaga Scholarship in Law (2017), urges
anyone involved in activism in the Caribbean
to apply for the scholarship, “Even if you feel
disheartened that law may be too hard, I am
telling you that this Faculty will help you achieve
your goal. If you work with them, they will work
with you. If you know that you have been working
hard continuously for your community (it does
not have to be a physical community. It could
be a community of so many different persons
and groups) a law degree can definitely help you
achieve that”.
To apply for the Scholarship please visit
To apply to the Faculty of Law
please visit
The deadline for applications:
June 30, 2019.
Mohammed names Professor of English Literature Gordon
Rohlehr, for his “capacity to engage in the subject matter and
to travel with it”, and Professor of History Bridget Brereton,
whose “detailed, methodical approach and economy of
words” she admires.
In the Netherlands, the five-year PhD research period
was a “very intensive and lonely experience”. At the same
time, Mohammed wanted to transcend from left-brained
logic to right-brained creativity. Reaching out for balance,
she found it in art, a perennial passion. After attending
her exhibition, Mohammed attached herself to a Dutch
artist who paid her a small stipend. By the time she left the
International Institute of Social Studies, she was able to put
on her own full exhibition.
Broadening the imaginative capacity was a conduit to
seeing beyond academic arguments and to sifting through
and surfacing with new ideas. She said that this process was
an intuitive one, necessary to provide balance, perspective
and feeling. Her movement to film-making in which she
has made, among others, two award-winning films “Coolie
Pink and Green” (2009) and “City on a Hill” (2015) and
book
Imaging the Caribbean: Culture and Visual Translation
(2009) were products of a similar aesthetic sensibility of
history.
And for her final research role at The UWI, Professor
Mohammed would also return to that instinctive process
of combining logic with creative storytelling. She
conceptualised The UWI Visual Heritage Exhibition,
researched and developed over eight months with the skilled
hand of Research Assistant Chelsea Seetahal. Mohammed
undertook the task as “a gift for the university” and as an
“attempt to leave a footprint both for the heritage (of The
UWI) and the growth of Graduate Studies”.
The exhibition, launched on May 24, is a celebratory
nexus of The UWI’s architectural heritage, colonial and
post-colonial history, student life in evolution, and many
other transformative events that have shaped the institution
from 1922 to present day.
The photographic exhibition was presented in
two sections, located in the main corridor of the Lloyd
Braithwaite Student Administration Building, and the offices
of Graduate Studies and Research, respectively.
Professor Mohammed offered parting words for The
UWI’s continued success as a repository for artistic and
historical record and scholastic identity: “I would like the
university to be conscious of the feeling of awe it must create
for its students, staff and visitors and to ensure that its beauty
is maintained and to build on that. For example, create a
design for our main sidewalks with our own imprint of tiles
that tell this story, so when you walk in the university, you
walk into a compound that already has a signature of the
space; it brings a whole different feel to that journey.”
Look out for Mohammed’s forthcoming publications:
Connecting the Dots: Work Life Balance and Ageing,
(Ian
Randle), and
Gender and Cultural Studies Caribbean Reader
(Hansib).
Prof Mohammed at the Women and Development Studies (WAND) Group Interdisciplinary seminar with Sandra Edwards of WAND in 1987.
PHOTO: COURTESY PROFESSOR PATRICIA MOHAMMED
Sabrina Vailloo is a writer, editor and certified events coordinator. She’s currently head of branding at a local start-up.
Professor Mohammed with Rhoda Reddock, Professor of Gender and Development; Dr Leith Dunn, Head of the IGDS Mona Campus Unit;
and Professor Eudine Barriteau, Campus Principal of The UWI Cave Hill Campus, at a gender conference in Mona, Jamaica in 2003.
