Conference Program Committee

Meagan Sylvester, Program Chair

Music Sociologist

Meagan Sylvester is a Music Sociologist with a consultancy practice through which she provides her clients with insight into the sociological framing of Caribbean and diasporic spaces using the lens of indigenous musics of the Caribbean as the main units of analysis. Her work delves into connections among Caribbean music, issues of identity, migration and cultural transformations as expressed in the festival culture between the Caribbean and other traditional and non-traditional Carnival festival locales.

Partnering with several organizations around the globe, her work encompasses academic conference presentations, hosting scholarly workshops, participating in international seminars and being a member of strategic teams responsible for sociological research and analysis across both western and non-western cultures including Europe, Latin America, South America, the United States and numerous islands in the Caribbean.

Author

Meagan Sylvester is a published author from the Caribbean twin island of Trinidad and Tobago. She has over twenty (20) book chapters and journal articles. She currently has two book projects on Carnival, Culture and Music under contract with a publisher.

Researcher

She is a graduate of The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus and a Caribbean scholar whose doctoral research focused on Narratives of Resistance in Calypso and Ragga Soca music. Her continuing interrogation within the academy centers on Music, Gender, and National Identity in Calypso and Soca, Music of Diasporic Carnivals, Narratives of Resistance in Calypso and Ragga Soca music, Steelpan and kaisoJazz musical identities. Teaching and research interests are Caribbean Music Cultures and African Diaspora Popular Culture.

Educator

She is a former Visiting Professor, Sociology and Anthropology at Farmingdale State College at (SUNY) The State University of New York. Her current teaching assignments at (CUNY) The City University of New York are as follows: (i) Assistant Professor (Adj) of Africana Studies at Queens College, (ii) Assistant Professor, (Adj.) English at New York City College Technology and Teaching Faculty in Communications and English at the Percy E. Sutton SEEK Program at Queens College.

She holds professional memberships in international organizations which include the Society for Ethnomusicology, the International Association of the Study for Popular Music, Caribbean Studies Association and the Association of Black Sociologists.

CSA Experience

Meagan Sylvester has been a member of the Caribbean Studies Association since 1999 and her first conference attendance was in St. Lucia in 2000. Over the years she has assisted several CSA presidents as a member of their conference planning committees. In 2012-2013 she was a member of the Local Organising Committee with President Godfrey St. Bernard for the Trinidad conference. Following that, in 2013 – 2015, she held the position as the Graduate Student Representative along with having responsibility for heading up the newly minted online public interface of the organisation as the Newsletter Editor, and she remains at the helm of the Newsletter Committee to date. Her CSA contribution has been wide and varied and particular mention should be made of the assistance provided for the 2014-2015 New Orleans conference with President Jan de Cosmo and the Haiti conference in 2015-2016, under the headship of President Carole Boyce Davies. She shifted gears slightly in 2022-2023 to be the Program Chair for the St. Croix, USVI conference where she worked along President Dr. Chenzira Davis Kahina. For the 2024-2025 year, she will head the Program Team for the St. Maarten conference for which Dr. Rhoda Arrindell is the President.

E-mail: program.chair@caribbeanstudiesassociation.org

Jewel Nicome, Program Chair Assistant

Jewel Nicome completed her B. A. in Communications Studies with a minor in History at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine campus. She has worked as a Corporate Communication Assistant at the Eastern Regional Health Authority. She completed short courses in Adobe Design Essentials at SBCS Global Learning Institute and Photography Level I at the University of the West Indies, Open Campus. She is currently pursuing a certificate in Digital Marketing and Branding under the Ministry of Sport and Youth Development.

CSA Experience

Ms. Nicome’s experience in the Caribbean Studies Association began in 2022 when she worked as one of the graduate student assistants for the first post-pandemic/online CSA conference which was hosted from Jamaica. In 2023, she held the position as Assistant to the Program Chair for the annual conference which was held in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. Following this exposure to CSA, she began working with the CSA Journal Team as Program Co-ordinator for the CSA Journal, Caribbean Conjunctures and is a committee member of the CSA Manual of Procedures Committee. In 2024-2025, she is again assisting with programming for the St. Maarten conference.