2021 Executive Council Elections

Patrick Brown

Active for many years as a partner in programming at Burlington’s Howard Center and a longtime lecturer at the University of Vermont, Patrick Brown also has been one of the most active members of the greater Burlington community as an advocate and educator on diversity issues and initiatives.

Brown came from his native Jamaica decades ago to study at Concordia University in Montreal, graduating in 1982 before coming to Saint Michael’s for his education master’s. He liked the community so much, he stayed in the area after exploring many other regions that never quite measured up. He has been honored with the Burlington Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Award, United Way Community Impact Award, Antonio B. Pomerleau Medal of Honor, City of Burlington Lifetime Achievement Award and many other awards for his service.  He also is deeply involved in the arts and culture scene in Burlington and has been the Executive Director of the Greater Burlington Multicultural Resource Center for many years and served on many non-profit Boards. A major accomplishment in his life and career was planning and executing the historic visit of Archbishop Desmond Tutu to Vermont in 2005. Brown is the external community liaison to Howard Center and serves on the Turning Point Board and as a Trustee of St. Michael’s College.

Russell Fielding

Russell Fielding is currently an Assistant Professor in the HTC Honors College at Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina, USA, having previously taught at the University of the West Indies-Cave Hill, in Barbados. Born and raised on the Gulf Coast of Florida, he received his Ph.D. in geography from Louisiana State University with a cognate focus in oceanography. Fielding’s scholarship applies interdisciplinary methods to investigate how people make healthy and sustainable use of natural resources in contexts characterized by societal and environmental change.He directs two major research projects: the first on the human and environmental implications of fishing and whaling in the Lesser Antilles and the second on the connections between breadfruit’s potential future role in global food security and climate change mitigation and its fraught history as a Caribbean colonial introduction. He is the author of The Wake of the Whale: Hunter Societies in the Caribbean and North Atlantic as well as more than twenty-five other scholarly publications.

Kristina Hinds

Kristina Hinds is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill. She holds a PhD in International Relations (LSE), an MA in International Relations (University of Kent), a PGDip in University Teaching and Learning (University of the West Indies) and a BA in International Development Studies (St. Mary’s University). She has published a book, Civil Society Organisations, Governance and the Caribbean Community, as well as journal articles and book chapters on a variety of areas relating to Caribbean governance and International Relations/Political Economy. Hinds has served on varied bodies within the International Studies Association (2015-2021) and as the Caribbean Studies Association’s Programme Chair (2019-2021). She is one of the hosts of “Down to Brass Tacks”, a Barbadian current affairs radio show; has represented Barbados as national Field Hockey Goalkeeper; and served as the Female Vice-President of the Barbados Hockey Federation (2016-2018).

Anta Anthony Merritt

Anta Anthony Merritt is a faculty member of the Department of Africana Studies at San Diego State University, San Diego, CA., and is adjunct instructor in the Black Studies department at San Diego Mesa College, CA.  He holds the MA in history and the Ph.D in Interdisciplinary Studies with a specialization in African Studies. Dr. Merritt’s doctoral work was based on field work on the culture and history of Ethiopia, with a focused dissertation on the community of Afro Caribbean and African American people who have moved/self-repatriated to Ethiopia and have maintained their community since its inception in 1955.

His current research interest is the study of African Diaspora martial arts and their positive affect on inner-city West Indian and African American youth.

He is married, and a father of one son and a grandfather of two girls.

L. Kaifa Roland

L. Kaifa Roland is currently an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Department of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder.Her research is in the area of cultural anthropology with a regional focus on the Caribbean and the broader African Diaspora. Having conducted extensive field research in Cuba, she has topical interests in entrepreneurship, national identity, racial and gender constructions, popular cultural practices, and critiques of capitalism.

Patricia Saunders

Patricia Saunders is Associate Professor of English at the University of Miami. She is also the Senior Co-editor of Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, an open access peer reviewed journal. Her book publications include Alienation and Repatriation: Translating Identity in Anglophone Caribbean Literature (Rowman and Littlefield, 2007).  She is also the co-editor of Music. Memory. Resistance: Calypso and the Literary Imagination (Ian Randle Press, 2007). Her current scholarship focuses on consumer culture and the production of the Caribbean region in films, hip-hop and dancehall music, visual art and “sista-girl” literature. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including The Journal of West Indian Literature, Small Axe, Plantation Society in the Americas, the Bucknell Review, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies and Feminist Studies. She is completing a manuscript entitled Buyers Beware: Insurgency and Consumption in Caribbean Popular Culture is forthcoming with Rutgers University Press.

Regan Reid

Regan Reid is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Juvenile Justice program at the Prairie View A&M University in Texas, United States. She is also a graduate assistant working under the supervision of Camille Gibson (PhD) and is involved in collaborative projects with the Texas Juvenile Crime Prevention Centre and the Campbell Collaboration. Her current research interests include child-rearing and family processes in Jamaica, youth behavioural health, mental health, bullying behavior, juvenile justice policy analysis and management, economic development, sustainability risks, and opportunities.

Regan earned her bachelor’s degree in Political Science (major) and Criminology (minor) and a master’s degree in International Public and Development Management from the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica. For her M.Sc. research, Regan wanted to better understand the (consumer) debt culture among emerging adults and its implications for sustainability, specifically in a developing country (Jamaica). She received an outstanding final research paper (2018-2019) award from the University of the West Indies, Mona, for that research.

In the past three years, Regan has worked as a teaching and graduate research assistant for the Public and Policy Management Unit in the Department of Government at the University of the West Indies. She taught Criminology, International Relations, Public Policy and Management, and Political Science at the undergraduate levels. She also worked as an assistant lecturer in International Perspectives on Regulations and Regulatory Reform at the graduate level before being contracted by the Ministry of Health and Wellness (Jamaica) as an administrative research specialist to produce a draft white paper around the national health infrastructure.

Regan is a former postgraduate representative and faculty representative of the Society of Future Policy Leaders, UWI Mona. She also volunteered with and was appointed as the chair of the policy and advocacy unit, Commonwealth Youth Peace Ambassadors Network (CYPAN). Today she serves as a global peace ambassador with the Global Peace Chain (Non-profit Organization).