Retired UWI Barbados professor to deliver Emancipation lecture
Published:Wednesday | July 14, 2021 | 12:06 AM
Professor Pedro Welch, a retired professor of Social and Medical History from the Cave Hill Campus of The University of the West Indies in Barbados, will deliver this year’s address in the Annual Churches Emancipation Lecture Series. The topic will be ‘Tracking the Legacy of Enslavement and Emancipation in the COVID-19 Century’.
The lecture will be streamed live on Sunday, July 25, 2021 starting at 4 p.m. under the country’s precautionary coronavirus protocols. The lecture is being hosted by the Churches’ Emancipation Lecture Committee, whose members are Bethel and Boulevard Baptist churches, Meadowbrook United, Webster Memorial United and Hope United churches, and the United Theological College of the West Indies. It is being hosted this year by Webster.
Members of the general public may attend the lecture online by logging on to Webster’s YouTube platform.
The lecture presenter, Professor Welch, is a former deputy principal of the UWI’s Cave Hill Campus and a distinguished medical historian and author. He has served on several public boards and committees in Barbados, and as chairman of the Task Force on Reparation in that Caribbean country. He is the current editor of the Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society. His lecture is expected to track the legacy of enslavement and emancipation in the Caribbean, in the context of the devastating impact of COVID-19, which has caused widespread ill health, and unprecedented levels of hospitalisations and deaths in the region and globally.
ADVANCING PUBLIC EDUCATION
The annual Churches Emancipation Lecture series, now in its 28th year, seeks to advance public education and action concerning emancipation of African ancestors from chattel slavery in the Caribbean in 1838. It is also concerned with addressing the ongoing need for social, economic and spiritual renewal in a region that is still suffering the consequences of slavery and colonisation.
Under the theme ‘Emancipation: The Lesson and the Legacy’, the annual lectures have included presentations in the areas of education, culture, youth, business, religion, healthcare, housing, gender equity, land reform, reparation, among others.
Members of the public are encouraged to log on to this year’s lecture which forms part of Jamaica’s annual Emancipendence observances.