Eduardo Restrepo

Title: What does it mean to do cultural studies in Colombia today?

Doctoral Program, Anthropology, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Researcher of Instituto de Estudios Sociales y Culturales Pensar, Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá. Professor of the Cultural Studies Graduate Program, Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá. Publications: Políticas de la teoria y dilemas de los estudios de las colombias negras. (Popayán: Editorial de la Universidad del Cauca). Teorías de la etnicidad. Entre la etnicidad sin garantias de Stuart Hall y la ontología histórica de Michel Foucault. (Popayán: Editorial Universidad del Cauca. 2004).    

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Arturo Escobar - Keynote Speaker

Title: Latin America at a Crossroads: Moving Beyond Modernity? Arturo was born in Manizales, Colombia. He is currently a Colombian national and a United States citizen. In 1969, he attended the Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia. Here he got his Bachelors of Science in Chemical Engineering. From there he went to Universidad del Valle Medical School in 1975 and spent a year doing graduate work in the biochemistry field. In 1976, he spent two years at Cornell University, New York getting his Master's Degree in Food Science and International Nutrition.    

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Daniel Mato

Title: All Industries are Cultural. A Critique of the Idea of "Cultural Industries" and New Possibilities for Research

Daniel Mato is Full Professor of Social Sciences and Chair of the Program on Culture, Communication, and Social Transformations (PCCTS), at the Center for Postdoctoral Research, Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV). He holds a Doctorate in Social Sciences (UCV), and has been a Visiting Professor at several universities in Latin America, Spain and the United States.    

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M. Jacqui Alexander

Title: Ouvri baryè-a pou nou pasé la: Cultural Studies in the Domain of Papa Legba

M. Jacqui Alexander is Professor of Women's Studies and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Pedagogies of Crossing: Feminism, Sexual Politics and The Sacred, The Third Wave: Feminist Perspectives on Racism, and a coeditor of Sing, Whisper, Shout, Pray! Feminist Visions for a Just World and Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures.    

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Stephen Ching-kiu Chan

Title: Putting Pedagogy Back into Cultural Studies: The (Un-)Learning of Culture and its Pragmatic Challenges

Dr. Stephen Ching-kiu Chan is Professor of Cultural Studies and Programme Director of the Master of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. He founded the BA Cultural Studies degree in 1999, and served as Department Head in Cultural Studies from 2000 to 2003, teaching practicum in cultural criticism, cultural policy and institution, representation, and critical thinking through popular culture.    

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Rex Nettleford

Rex Nettleford is a well-known Caribbean scholar, trade union educator, social and cultural historian and political analyst. A former Rhodes Scholar, he is Vice Chancellor Emeritus at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. After taking an undergraduate degree in History at the UWI he pursued post-graduate studies in Politics at Oxford. He is also the founder, artistic director and principal choreographer of the internationally acclaimed National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica and is regarded as a leading Caribbean authority in the performing arts.    

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Carolyn Cooper

Title: 'Pedestrian Crosses': Sites of Dislocation in 'Post-colonial' Jamaica

Carolyn Cooper is Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica and Director of the Institute of Caribbean Studies. Cooper is author of Sound Clash: Jamaican Dancehall Culture at Large, and Noises in the Blood: Orality, Gender and 'Vulgar' Body of Jamaican Popular Culture.    

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John Clarke

Title: Restating the problem of power: politics, policies and populations

John Clarke is a Professor of Social Policy at the Open University in the UK, where he has been engaged in teaching and research for over twenty five years. After a first degree in Management Studies, he was rescued by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, where he was a postgraduate for five years. During that time he was part of the writing groups that produced Resistance Through Rituals and Policing the Crisis.    

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Stephen Muecke

Title: The Nature of Culture

Stephen Muecke is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He has worked extensively in Indigenous Australia and more recently on the historical and contemporary links between culture and commerce in the Indian Ocean. His 1984 Reading the Country: Introduction to Nomadology (with Krim Benterrak and Paddy Roe) was one of the first postmodern ethnographies, and he is well known for his ficto-critical writing style (No Road (bitumen all the way), 1997).    

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Kamau Brathwaite, New York University

Title: DiVination: intending the culturation discourse

Poet, playwright, critic, and historian, whose works deal with the complex Caribbean heritage and its African roots. Brathwaite has been a major proponent of the use of "nation language", which is closely allied to the African experience in the Caribbean. It is not dialect or creole merely, but  as Brathwaite had defined "the kind of English spoken by the people who were brought to the Caribbean, not the official English now, but the language of slaves and labourers, the servants who were brought in".    

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