call for papers
19th Annual Conference
november 13–14, 2025
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The University of the West Indies, Global Campus Antigua and Barbuda
The University of the West Indies, Five Islands Campus
The Antigua and Barbuda Studies Association (ABSA)
The Antigua and Barbuda Youth Enlightenment Academy (ABYEA)
Announce the Call for Papers
For
Our 19th Annual Country Conference
Online
November 13–14, 2025
On the Theme
The Caribbean, Antigua and barbuda in our changing global order
Greetings again one and all – members of our Antiguan and Barbuda scholarly community. Yes, it is that time of the year for us to gather once more to reflect and exchange ideas about our beloved Antigua and Barbuda, and the larger Caribbean region of which we are an integral part. In other words, it is time for us to start thinking, writing and planning for our 19th Annual Antigua and Barbuda Country Conference. Last year, our guiding theme was Caribbean Democracy and trade in our era of increasing global authoritarianism, multi-polarity, climate change and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Within that framework, we introduced two Antiguan and Barbudan philosophers, Amir Jaima and Eustace Armstrong, expanding our coverage of the humanities in Antigua and Barbuda. We continued our exploration of AI and its significance for Antigua and Barbuda, and our keynote speaker, Prof. Patsy Lewis, brought us up to date on trade and regional integration within the framework of our rapidly changing global order.
Since we met last year, global authoritarianism, multi-polar tendencies, racial tensions have only increased across much of our world. The conflicts in Gaza, the Sudan and trends in the United States are important cases in point. The policies of the second Trump administration have been a major factor contributing to the increases in the above trends. Among the most important of these American policies have been the tariffication of trade, visafication of international relations, the further penetration of American civil society as in the cases of the Kennedy Center and major universities, and last but by no means least, the increasing opposition to earlier policies of racial equality for African Americans.
So far, tariffication has been the use of tariffs to re-structure and rebalance international trade so that it is much more beneficial to the U.S. economy. Similarly, the visafication of international relations involves the increasingly coercive use of visas to pressure both American civil society and countries abroad to conform to a widening range of American policies, including immigration. The intensifying of anti-black policies has taken the form of further weakening the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as part of a broader attack on existing policies of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). In particular, Trump’s executive order closing the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, and the opening of offices for helping white Americans file claims of discrimination against DEI policies are good indicators of this anti-black trend. Although different, corresponding trends can be observed in Europe. In short, policies of deeper penetrations into civil society, increasing tariffication, visafication and anti-black racism have become major contributors to the rising levels of authoritarianism in many Western countries. If last year’s keynote speaker was addressing us now, her talk would be very different.
These new policies, along with others, have been the responses of the Trump administration to the crisis of the neoliberal policies adopted by Britain and the U.S. in the early 1980s that were administered by the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. This neoliberal era is now clearly passing because its policies led to the excessive de-industrialization and financialization of these two economies and contributed greatly to the increased industrialization and rapid development of China. In this post-neoliberal era, the global politico-economic order is dominated by the competition between an American capitalist economy with Trumpian characters and a Chinese socialist economy with Deng-Xian characters. Together, these sets of changes, along with the collapse and decline of the Soviet Bloc, produced the stage upon which the multi-polar tendencies of our era have been emerging.
More specifically, this tariff approach to trade has increased the coercive and authoritarian manner of recovering from the excessive de-industrialization produced by the neoliberal policies of the 1980s and 1990s. These more coercive policies have replaced those of bilateral free trade agreements, partnership agreements, such as the one the Caribbean has with the European Union, policies of incentivized re-industrialization, of on-shoring, near-shoring, and friend-shoring, which still recognized WTO rules.
What separates Trump’s policy of tariffication from the above earlier responses is its near-complete sidelining of the WTO and its replacement by the unilateral and market-displacing authority of the American president to raise or impose tariffs as punitive measures to get countries to do what the U.S. wants them to do.
During the passing neoliberal era, Antigua and Barbuda, along with several other Caribbean territories, experienced major contractions in our industrial sectors as a result of competition from China. In response, we increased our reliance on tourism, offshore banking and real estate. We became tourism, finance, Insurance and real estate dominated. In other words, what is known in the economic literature as a FIRE and Tourism economy. The major exceptions have been the mineral sectors of the economies of Jamaica, Trinidad and Guyana.
So, the task before us today is to look carefully at how our party politics, our culture and our FIRE-tourist economy are being affected by these sets of global changes and how we are responding. For example, in Antigua and Barbuda, what is the current state of the crisis in the United Progressive Party and its impact on our two-party political system? In Latin America, China has replaced the U.S. as its number one trading partner. Canada and Mexico are doing their best to hold on to the U.S. as their number one trading partner. What will be our response to these shifting trends? Will the nature of the trading relations of our FIRE-tourist economy leave us largely outside the reach of policies of tariffication? Or will some of the indirect effects, such as inflation, access to supply chains seriously harm our open and vulnerable economies? Are we feeling the effects of visafication on our Citizenship by Investment Programs, travel and other relations with the U.S.? We have long been concerned about rising levels of anti-black racism in the Western countries. Should we be even more concerned now?
So, as we gather for our 19th meeting, these are some of the global issues that we must take into account as we continue to explore more local issues and concerns such as the emerging field of Antiguan and Barbudan philosophy, and its place in a possible university major in Antiguan and Barbudan Studies. As last year’s meeting strongly suggested, we must continue our focus on how AI and the broader field of information and communications technology are affecting social life, the arts and sciences in Antigua and Barbuda.
If you are interested in making a presentation at this 2025 conference, please send us a brief abstract that includes your name, your title and a brief description of the theme of your presentation. We must receive your abstract by September 30, 2025. It will help us to put you on the right panel. Your abstract, in the form of a Word document, should be emailed to [email protected] or to [email protected].
Paget Henry
President
ABSA
Coleen Letlow
Head
UWI (Antigua)
Janet Lofgren
Editorial Assistant
A&B Review of Books