SUNDAY 10 SEPTEMBER, 2017 – UWI TODAY
5
CAMPUS NEWS
On August 17, The UWI St. Augustine’s Alma Jordan Library
in collaboration with The UWI
Press and Republic Bank Limited launched the book Returned Exile: A Biography of George James
Christian of Dominica and the Gold Coast, 1869-1940 authored by Margaret D. Rouse-Jones and
Estelle M. Appiah.
Dr. John Campbell, Senior Lecturer, History Department, The UWI St. Augustine gave an
instructive and insightful review of the book, which illuminated a dimension of the African experience
not adequately captured – the story of returnees from the British West Indies to Africa.
Specifically, the book tells the story of the life of pan-Africanist George James Christian who
retained his Caribbean roots as he fulfilled his desire to make Africa his home. From relatively
humble beginnings in Dominica in the Eastern Caribbean, Christian travelled to London in 1898 to
train as a Barrister-at-law at Gray’s Inn, after which he migrated to the Gold Coast where he made
his home until his death in 1940.
Rouse-Jones became interested when Appiahmentioned at their first meeting that “she was from
Ghana but hadWest Indian roots.”This chance meeting set the stage for the authors’ decision in 1991
to write the book together – they then began to do research in London, Dominica and Ghana. In
2005, The George James Christian Papers, constituting more than 5,000 items, were donated to The
University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus by Mrs. Essi Matilda Forster, Estelle Appiah’s
mother and they are housed in theWest Indiana and Special Collections Division of theMain Library.
The collection was closed for ten years and opened to the public in 2016.
The launch was chaired by Karen Lequay, University and Campus Librarian of Open Campus
Libraries and Information Services. Afterwards,the authors signed copies of the book.
AHidden History at the
Returned Exile Book Launch
A Biography of George James Christian
and the Gold Coast, 1869-1940
Authors Margaret Rouse-Jones and Estelle Appiah launching the book.
Margaret Rouse-Jones signs a copy of the book for her long-time friend, Madame Justice Margot Warner,
retired Justice of Appeal.
PHOTOS: GABRIEL CHAN WING
Making Households Matter
With the national budget looming on the horizon
, the Institute for Gender and
Development Studies at the St. Augustine Campus is hosting a pre-budget forum to raise
some awareness of its latest project of gender integration.
The Forum is free and open to the public and it takes place onWednesday September 13,
at theMain Auditoriumof the Learning Resource Centre at the St. Augustine Campus, UWI.
The panelists will be Dr. Marlene Attzs, Lecturer at the Department of Economics, The
UWI; Dr. Keron King, Lecturer in Criminology at COSTATT; Dr. Oscar Noel Ocho, Director
of The UWI School of Nursing, and Mrs. Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan, former Minister of
Public Administration.
The theme of the forum is Budget for Gender Justice: Make households matter to the
House.
The IGDS has undertaken a project to develop a tool to comprehensively integrate a
gender perspective into deliberations on the national budget. One of the main objectives of
this project is to engage in sector-specific research, to make evident the ways in which the
budget is translated into people’s lived realities at the level of the household.
