Jamaican cultural historian, social activist, scholar, and novelist Erna Brodber is the winner of this year’s Bridget Jones Award for Caribbean Studies, which is sponsored by the Society for Caribbean Studies. Brodber has done pioneering research on Caribbean oral histories and helped to bring nation languages into the mainstream of world literature. She holds a Jamaican Musgrave Gold Award for Literature and Orature, and her novel Myal won the Caribbean and Canadian section of the Commonwealth Writers Prize. In 2006, Brodber received the Prince Claus Award. She will receive the award at the 34th Annual Conference of the Society for Caribbean Studies. She is also the author of Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home, which won acclaim for its experimental structure. This conference will take place at the University of Southampton on July 7 -9, 2010.

The Society for Caribbean Studies Conference is hosting a large variety of panels dedicated to themes such as Maritime Studies, Archaeology and Material Culture, Ports of Arrival, Pedagogy and Education, The Windrush Generation, Intra-Caribbean Migration, Caribbean Popular Music, Performance, Regional Integration and the Future of Caricom, Oral History, and Nature-Society Relations.

Some of the conference highlights include the opening lecture by Jean Besson—”Southampton Arrival: The Making of a Meso-Creole, a Caribbeanist and Caribbean Studies in the UK”—and the Bridget Jones Award Presentation.

For more information and full program, see http://www.caribbeanstudies.org.uk

For more information on  (and photo of) Erna Brodber, see http://www.princeclausfund.org/en/what_we_do/awards/PrinceClausFundAwards2006ErnaBrodber.shtml