Prospects and Challenges for Caribbean Societies in and Beyond COVID-19

This book presents contributions from a multidisciplinary team of researchers who analyzed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and prospects for the Caribbean region. This book examines experiences, and responses to the pandemic in the region  as well as some of the lessons that can be leveraged on beyond the pandemic.

The volume is organized into four parts. Part I offers perspectives on the structural factors that influenced the Caribbean's experience with the COVID-19 pandemic. Part II delves into the social and psychological dimensions of the pandemic's impact in the region, offering specific examples. Part III explores the ramifications of the pandemic on crime and violence. And Part IV is dedicated to analyzing the regional and national responses to the pandemic.

Prospects and Challenges for Caribbean Societies in and beyond COVID-19 will be of interest to researchers in a wide range of disciplines within the Social and Behavioral Sciences interested in studies about the Caribbean. It also aims to serve as a source of information and inspiration for researchers, practitioners and decision makers interested in contributing to the development of the Caribbean region.

Camille Huggins is a lecturer in the Social Work unit in the Department of Behavioural Sciences at The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine campus in Trinidad and Tobago since 2015. Dr. Huggins is a social work practitioner and researcher with over twenty years of direct practice experience in New York City as a medical social worker.  Her practice experience included working with the homeless population, victims of sexual assault and child abuse and older adults.   Dr. Huggins’s research interests are the traumatic experiences of minoritized women and death and grief experiences and rituals. Dr. Huggins has co-authored and/or co-edited three books, including Gender and Domestic Violence in the Caribbean (2021) and Domestic Violence in the Anglophone Caribbean (2022).

Talia Esnard, PhD in Sociology, is a Senior Lecturer and current Head/Chair of the Department of Behavioural Sciences at The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine campus, Trinidad and Tobago.  Her work  focuses on issues of women, work, and organizations; particularly within entrepreneurial and educational spheres. Her work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Motherhood Initiative; Women, Gender, and Families of Color; Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership; Mentoring and Tutoring: Partnership in Learning; and NASPA Journal about Women in Higher Education.  She is the published co-edited, co-authored and sole authored books in the area of the tenure process, mentoring, equity, diversity, mothering and entrepreneurship. She also serves on an associate editor for the (i) Gender, Work, and Organization, (ii) Journal of Organizational Sociology, and (iii) Caribbean Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies. She was a recipient of Taiwan Research Fellowship (2012) and Canada-CARICOM Faculty Leadership Program (2015 at Brock University & 2018 at Ryerson University).   

Dr. Wendell C. Wallace is a lecturer in the Criminology and Criminal Justice Unit at The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. Dr. Wallace is also a Barrister who has been called to the Bar in both England and Wales and Trinidad and Tobago as well as a certified mediator with the Mediation Board of Trinidad and Tobago. Much of his work focuses on policing, gangs, violence (domestic and school), criminal justice reform and the tourism/crime nexus. He has completed several research projects on gangs in Trinidad and Tobago and is currently working on a project on policing in the Caribbean. Dr. Wallace is an active member of the Accreditation Council of Trinidad and Tobago, The Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn, London, the Caribbean Studies Association, and the Caribbean Child Research Conference Network.

Dr. Christine Descartes is a lecturer in Psychology in the Department of Behavioural Sciences at The University of the West Indies (UWI), St. Augustine Campus. With specialization in Developmental Psychology, her research focuses on behavioral and psychosocial development in children and adolescents. In particular, she is currently involved in national and regional research that centers on child maltreatment and trauma, as well as the development of aggression and other behavioural problems in children and adolescents. She is keen to much needed interdisciplinary research that will promote children’s rights, and advance policies that can positively impact the psychosocial well-being of children and their families. Her scholarly work has been published in both regional and international peer reviewed journals. She is presently a member of the UWI Press Editorial Committee and an Editorial Board member of the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment and Trauma. Dr. Descartes served as a member on the Board of Management of Children’s Authority of Trinidad and Tobago from 2017-2020

.Dr. Shelene Gomes teaches courses in Social Anthropology and the Sociology of Culture at TheUniversity of the West Indies, St. Augustine campus. With research interests in migration, mobilities, cosmopolitan thought and action, postcolonial religion, and spirituality as well as the politics of race, class and gender, her monograph Cosmopolitanism from the Global South (2021), traces the linkages between African diasporic imaginings and Caribbean cosmopolitan sensibilities based on ethnographic fieldwork in urban Ethiopia. Her current interdisciplinary research centers the political economy of family and kinship with voluntary women return migrants’ doing unwaged care work in Trinidad.