Small Axe Essay Competition

The Question of the Social Sciences - A Small Axe Essay Competition

Small Axe is keen to encourage work in the critical and interpretive social sciences. We are interested in the ways in which such disciplines as anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, and sociology seek to grapple with the regional and diasporic Caribbean. This interest stems partly from the fact that the social sciences have been central, historically, to the construction of the "Caribbean" as an object of scholarly inquiry, and central therefore to what we understand the problems are that require investigation and interpretation. But in the past several decades there has been a considerable disciplinary upheaval (engendered by the rise, for example, of poststructuralism, postcolonial studies, and cultural studies) such that the character of the social sciences has altered, and perhaps also social science modes of engaging and constructing the Caribbean.

This Small Axe essay competition seeks to encourage scholarship that engages the social sciences in a critical and historically informed way. We welcome manuscripts from across and between the disciplines that interrogate but also mobilize these disciplines. We are especially interested in the work of individuals at early stages in their scholarly careers.

Deadline: 15 November 2012  (the selected essay will be published in Small Axe in 2013)

Length: Not more than 7,000 words

Contact: socialscience@smallaxe.net  For more information visit http://www.smallaxe.net/

African Activist Archive Project

The African Activist Archive Project now has 5,000 digital items in its free, online collection (http://africanactivist.msu.edu/) from the U.S. anti-apartheid and other solidarity movements during the early 1950s to the mid-1990s. It includes documents, posters, photographs, T-shirts, buttons, and audio and video recordings that were produced by more than 260 groups in 35 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia. The archive also includes materials in support of the anti-colonial struggles elsewhere in Southern Africa, especially Namibia, Rhodesia, Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau.

Staff at Michigan State University Libraries are continuing to add materials - 1,500 items in 2011 and a planned 1,000 more in 2012, and also continue to contact former activists in the Africa solidarity movement.
In January, the project started a Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/African.Activist.Archive)
highlighting historically interesting and newly added items to the digital collection and pointing to similar archival projects.

Any UK readers with collections of similar material are very welcome to contact David Clover at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library

Caribbean Public Health in a Historical Perspective: Work–in–Progress Workshop University of York, 26 September 2012

Caribbean Public Health in a Historical Perspective: Work–in–Progress Workshop University of York, 26 September 2012


This workshop brings together historians, who are or will be working on public health in the colonial and independent Caribbean. It provides them with an opportunity to share their project and to get useful feedback from peers about their (proposed) methodology and/or preliminary findings.

Any aspect of public health will be considered but preference will be given to scholars working on the treatment, control and prevention of chronic or communicable diseases.

This is a free event (includes lunch and refreshments) and travel expenses within the UK will be refunded.

If you want to share your (upcoming) work on public health in the Caribbean with your peers, please email Dr. Henrice Altink at henrice.altink@york.ac.uk by 10 August 2012

The Intimacies of Four Continents - Public Lecture

The Intimacies of Four Continents


Tuesday 15th May, 17:30-19:30pm
Chancellor's Hall, Senate House, University of London


Speaker: Professor Lisa Lowe, School of Advanced Study Visiting Fellow for 2011/12, University of San Diego, California.

This lecture examines liberal ideas of citizenship, free labor, and free trade, in light of transatlantic and transpacific encounters between Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. It revisits the meaning of the liberal policy of "free trade," by way of a discussion of British literary representations of the colonial trades in cotton, silk and opium, and observes that British engagements with China during and after the Opium Wars constituted the conditions for "free trade," inasmuch as it inaugurated new modes of imperial sovereignty.

A reception will follow the lecture. All welcome to attend.

For further info please email: sas.events@sas.ac.uk

Louise Arbour Human Rights Research Studentships

The Institute of Commonwealth Studies will launch, beginning in the academic year 2012-13, the Louise Arbour Human Rights Research Studentships for new MPhil/PhD research students.


Madam Louise Arbour is a former Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court and former Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. In December 2010, Madam Arbour was awarded a Doctor of Laws of the University of London, honoris causa, and the Institute is honoured to offer studentships in her name in recognition of her career and achievements.

The Louise Arbour studentships provide the successful applicant with a fee waiver equivalent to up to 100% of the full-time or part-time tuition fee. In 2012-13, up to two full-time and two part-time studentships will be available. Successful applicants will be of exceptional quality, evidenced by previous academic achievement at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Successful applicants will have outstanding research proposals and genuine and demonstrable interest in being supervised by a member of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies faculty.

For further information please contact Simon Lund-Lack, Graduate Student Officer at simon.lund-lack@sas.ac.uk or 0207 862 8834.

World Bank Socio-Economic Database for Latin America and the Caribbean

The World Bank Socio-Economic Database for Latin America and the Caribbean


Available at http://sedlac.econo.unlp.edu.ar/eng/statistics.php the World Bank Socio-Economic Database for Latin America and the Caribbean is maintained by CEDLAS (Universidad Nacional de La Plata)

Content covers themes including poverty, trade and finance, education and health, and the millennium development goals, and the database contains information from over 200 household surveys carried out in 25 countries: Argentina, Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela. Most data covers from 1980 onwards.

The site also has a good selection of poverty maps for individual Latin American countries. 

May and June Bank Holidays

On May Day Bank Holiday, 7 May, the library will open 9.45 to 5.30 (Saturday hours).
The Library will be closed 4 and 5 June 2012.

Please visit the Opening Hours page on the website for more information.


Term Hours

Monday - Thursday: 09.00 - 21.00
Friday: 09.00 - 18.30
Saturday: 09.45 - 17.30