New Doctoral Thesis Explores Denmark’s Caribbean Colonial Legacy
Dr. Pardis Zahedi’s (2025) PhD dissertation entitled ‘Elements of Community: An Exploration of Postcolonial Heritage, Identity, and Memory in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands’, which she defended this month at Aarhus University, offers an outstanding contribution to Denmark’s understanding of its colonial past. It was developed as part of the DFF-funded Enduring Materialities of Colonialism (EMoC) project. The dissertation abstract reads:
“This dissertation examines the complex dynamics of community heritage and identity on St. Croix, USVI, a former Danish colony in the Caribbean. Through four thematic case studies – water, earth, wind, and fire – this research explores how communities on St. Croix negotiate meaning through material heritage tied to Danish colonialism. By investigating the intersections of identity, heritage, and memory, this study reveals the ways in which postcolonial heritage is constructed, contested, and reconciled. The findings of this research contribute to a deeper understanding of critical community heritage, highlighting the harmonies, tensions, ambiguities, and ambivalences inherent to diverse postcolonial communities with complex histories, and the ways in which these communities reclaim and reconfigure their cultural heritage in the face of enduring colonial legacies.”
The dissertation document will be made available open access on the Aarhus University website. We encourage you to have a read! If you have any questions, you are welcome to contact Dr. Zahedi at pardis.zahedi@gmail.com