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“The most profound period in my life was the four brief years of the Grenada Revolution. This gave me a glimpse into the possibilities of change towards a more democratic, egalitarian and just society, and the role that ordinary people can play in transforming their lives. But also, its violent implosion offered me valuable lessons about tolerance to other perspectives and the need for humility. UWI offers a valuable space for exercising creativity and initiative with a fair degree of autonomy. It also centres and legitimizes a focus on Caribbean realities. I want my work to contribute toward the creation of a more politically, socially and economically united and confident Caribbean, with a vision of a good society that is centred around our people. On a personal note, I would like to have raised two decent human beings [my children] who care about the world in which they live.”

Dr. Patsy Lewis

SENIOR FELLOW
SIR ARTHUR LEWIS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC STUDIES (SALISES)
FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
MONA CAMPUS, JAMAICA
Tel: (876) 927-1020/1234; (876) 935-8243 • Email: Patsy.Lewis@uwimona.edu.jm

PROFILE

Dr. Patsy Lewis is a graduate of both The University of the West Indies (Mona) and Cambridge University. She completed a BA degree in Mass Communications, First-Class Honours, and a Diploma in Public Administration from UWI; and an MPhil International Relations and a PhD in History at Cambridge (Trinity College). She also received a Rockefeller postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities to the Center of African and Afro-American Studies, University of Michigan. Dr. Lewis’ work has focused broadly on the political and economic challenges small states experience in achieving independent survival. Specifically, she has sought to analyse the legitimacy of the United States’ invasion of Grenada and the region’s role in this. She has also focused on the regional integration experience – its possibilities and failings – in addressing many of the challenges that are common to the Caribbean. This has led to the publication of a book, Surviving Small Size: Regional Integration in Caribbean Ministates and seven journal articles and book chapters. The book received the UWI Mona Principal’s Best Publication award for the Faculty of Social Sciences, for the year 2002–2003. Her most recent work has focused on the Caribbean in global trade and the challenges this holds, especially in gaining recognition of the particularities of small states and the potential for limiting possibility of change and structural transformation of their economies. This includes work on the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the CARIFORUM–EC Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), between CARICOM and the Dominican Republic and the European Union. Dr. Lewis discovered a passion for painting when she realised that she was monopolising her toddler’s paint sets. She has since graduated to canvases and water colour paper and more expensive brushes. Painting is her greatest expression of individual freedom: she sets the parameters; it is not required of her; and she doesn’t have to be good at it (although she’d like to be!). She confesses that she experiences a greater feeling of accomplishment from a completed painting than a published article.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Dr. Lewis would like to proceed with her research on two fronts: to continue to broaden her scope of work beyond the Caribbean in the direction of a more comparative frame of other small island states with similar challenges and features; and to work towards exploring alternative paths of development for the Caribbean region, drawing more on the possibilities for transformation that small size offers, to complement the focus on the challenges which has preoccupied her work. She would also like to create more synergies between her work and community outreach.