Inter-island Connections in the Lesser Antilles: Conference Update!
The IN THE SAME SEA team spent the end of February in St. Thomas, where, in cooperation with the University of the Virgin Islands and the Caribbean Genealogy Library, they ran a hybrid conference entitled Inter-Island Connections in the Lesser Antilles: Family, Friends, and Institutions Across the Sea. It brought together twenty speakers and over 100 audience members from different backgrounds both in person and online: family historians, professors, and students (including our own Gabriëlle La Croix). Assistant Professor of History (Morgan State University) and native Virgin Islander Dr. Joy Lewis delivered the keynote lecture, “A United Virgin Islands?”, which illustrated the long history of inter-imperial connection between the Danish/U.S. and British Virgin Islands that continues to this day. Panels included “Antillean family histories in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries” and “Food ways, survival, and resistance in the Lesser Antilles.” The conference revealed the many ways in which Caribbean peoples have always been connected across the sea and the value of connecting academics and non-academics, as there was much we could learn from each other.
A longer article reviewing the conference can be found in The St. Thomas Source.
Dr. Joy Lewis delivering the keynote lecture.