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At a Crossroads?: The Caribbean Historian and Heritage
About the lecture:
For Caribbean historians, our relationship with the region’s heritage has always been fraught with challenges. We share difficult stories on changing landscapes that are trying to heal from the scars of the past, often by removal or omission. Tangible heritage, such as documentary sources, historic houses, monuments, and museum collections scattered across both sides of the Atlantic, remains deeply contested, while intangible heritage, such as rituals, songs, music, stories, and ancestral memory, offers other ways of safeguarding and transmitting the past. At times, these forms of heritage coexist uneasily, caught between preservation and erasure, commodification and resistance.
Centring the role of the Caribbean historian, this lecture will explore some of these themes about the place of the history and heritage in the region’s cultural and scientific development. As one example, the archive is the most vital yet contested resource for the Caribbean historian. It is an archive divided between metropole and colony, private and public, written and oral, analogue and digital. It is fragile and has been made vulnerable to the forces of climate change, neglect, and politicisation. At the same time, the language of repair has opened possibilities for trans-Atlantic connection while also exposing heritage to the risks of appropriation and further loss.
In many ways, Caribbean history and heritage stand at a crossroads where possibilities and perils must be mediated and where multiple futures can be opened or foreclosed. As new pressures from climate change, global tourism and digital technologies reshape how heritage is preserved and transmitted, the Caribbean historian’s craft and responsibility to critique and safeguard becomes ever more critical, especially for the communities who need access to their history.
About Dr Inniss:
Dr Tara A. Inniss is a Lecturer in the Department of History, Philosophy and Psychology at The University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill Campus. The areas of focus for her teaching and research include: history of medicine; history of social policy; and heritage and social development. In 2002-03, she received a Split-Site Commonwealth PhD Scholarship to study at the UWI/ University of Manchester. She holds a PhD in Caribbean History from The UWI. In 2007, she completed a Masters in International Social Development at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. She is currently a visiting researcher at Jesus College, Cambridge University.
Dr Inniss currently serves as the Chair of the National Committee for Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH). She has served as a delegate for the Government of Barbados on the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of ICH and World Heritage Committee. She is also a member of Barbados' Research Teams for UNESCO World Heritage Property Historic Bridgetown and its Garrison and the Nomination for The Industrial Heritage of Barbados: The Story of Sugar and Rum. She currently sits on several committees for the Barbados Museum and Historical Society and is a past Secretary-Treasurer of the Association of Caribbean Historians (ACH).
Event Details:
Date: Thursday 6 November 2025
Time: 5.30pm
Venue: Bramber House, Level 3, on campus
Following the discussion, please feel free to stay and join us for a short drinks reception.
Tickets for this event are free, but booking is essential as places are limited. Book here.