Outstanding scholarship in Caribbean history

THE UNIVERSITY of the West Indies ( UWI) conferred an Honorary Doctor of Laws on Professor Emeritus Barry Higman for his “outstanding scholarship in the field of Jamaican and Caribbean history.”

In 1967, Higman came to Jamaica as a young Australian student to finish his Master’s Degree in West Indian History on a post- graduate scholarship from the University of Sydney.

He spent 25 years at the Department of History, serving twice as its head, (19841987 and 1990-1993).

The UWI terms Higman’s first book: Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica, 1807-1834 as a ‘milestone publication in the field of Caribbean history’. Higman has published 12 books.

He won several awards in Australia and the Caribbean, including the Gordon K. Lewis Award of the Caribbean Studies Association ( 2000) and the Elsa Goveia Book Prize of the Association of Caribbean Historians ( 1986 and 1999) among them.

The historian returned to Australia to teach at the Australian National University in 1996. Higman is now retired, but visited the UWI for the semester II 2013/ 14. He will teach modules in the graduate courses in heritage studies, e.g. oral history: value and techniques, and historic landscapes and environmental history.