Culture scholar Sonjah Stanley Niaah among eight new UWI professors
Published:Monday | March 24, 2025 | 10:57 AM
Cultural studies scholar Dr Sonjah Stanley Niaah and theology expert Dr Anna Kasafi Perkins are among eight newly promoted professors at The University of the West Indies, the highest academic rank at the regional institution.
The university announced the appointments on Monday. They took effect on February 19.
It said the promotions followed an "unbiased, rigorous assessment conducted by a panel of internal and external assessors."
Five of the new professors are from the Mona campus in Jamaica, and the other three are from the St Augustine Campus in Trinidad and Tobago.
Niaah, an authority on Jamaican dancehall and Black popular culture, has been promoted to Professor of Cultural Studies. Her interdisciplinary research spans politics, geography, music, dance, and gender studies, which, the university says, has helped position the institution as a leader in Caribbean cultural research.
Perkins, a leading figure in Caribbean theology and ethics, has been credited with making significant strides in exploring radical suffering, gender inequalities, race, and class dynamics.
Her work on post-colonial Jamaican religion and culture has earned her recognition internationally, including being named among the "20 Caribbean Theologians and Biblical Scholars You Should Know" in 2020.
The other new UWI professors include Dr Joshua Anzinger, a virologist who studied COVID-19, and whose work on HIV and arboviral diseases has garnered over US$15.6 million in research funding.
Dr Colette Cunningham-Myrie, a family medicine practitioner and expert in public health and epidemiology whose work focuses on noncommunicable diseases in the Caribbean, has also been elevated. She has been recognized for research on diabetes, physical activity, obesity, and sickle cell disease in low- and middle-income countries.
Head of the sub-department for chemical pathology, Dr Donovan McGrowder, has also been appointed professor. He specializes in chemical pathology (clinical chemistry), with work broadly based on laboratory medicine in a diverse range of topics.
He was lauded by assessors for his work on investigating health problems in Jamaica, ranging from diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and leptospirosis to microbial growth in supermarket milk, the effects of pumpkin seed oil, and COVID-19.
The newly promoted professors are based at the Mona and St. Augustine campuses and represent various disciplines, including public health, chemical pathology, transport phenomena, and peripheral vascular surgery.
The three other professors are from UWI's St. Augustine campus in Trinidad and Tobago: Dr Dhurjati Prasad Chakrabarti, promoted to professor of transport phenomena; Dr Madan Mohan Gupta, professor of pharmaceutics; and Dr Patrick Harnarayan, professor of peripheral vascular surgery.
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