The British-American journalist and reparations activist Laura Trevelyan has been appointed as an associate fellow by the P.J. Patterson Institute for Africa Caribbean Advocacy.
According to a statement from the Hon. Percival Patterson, the Institute’s statesman-in-residence, Trevelyan’s new position will help it raise funds for the organization, “to strengthen the Institute’s role as a significant advocacy organization capable of facilitating positive change, extending its outreach in the global space and strengthening ties between the motherland and the diaspora”.
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Jamaica’s former Prime Minister added, “at this stage, special attention is being devoted to funding and sustainability, strengthening the human resources/technical expertise to support the work, and building of a global sphere of influence through high-quality research, publications, seminars, and workshops”.
Trevelyan is descended from a well-known British family that ran a plantation in Grenada with over a thousand slaves. She resigned from her position as a BBC anchor and UN correspondent after discovering this. During a ceremony in Grenada in February 2023, she and her family publicly apologized and established a fund for reparations with a donation of £100,000 to support education on the island.
Along with other British families whose ancestors benefited from slavery, Trevelyan co-founded a group called “Heirs of Slavery,” which aims “to amplify the voices of those already calling for reparations, including Caribbean governments.”
The P.J. Patterson Institute for Africa Caribbean Advocacy, housed at the University of the West Indies, Mona, seeks to use a specific institutional agreement to consolidate and organize its interactions with African governments, peoples, universities, and other institutions.
Patterson greeted Trevelyan at the Institute and expressed her gratitude for “the principled position and gracious gesture of reparation taken by you and the Trevelyan family to the Government and people of Grenada.”
He remarked, “We also welcome your decision to step back from a significant role at the BBC to be a global advocate for reparative justice for the Caribbean.”
Patterson noted, “in the face of an increasing array of existential threats to the lives and livelihoods of peoples on both sides of the Atlantic, there is an unequivocal need to strengthen, deepen, and extend the social, cultural, psychological, economic, and other connections between African and Caribbean peoples”.
He stated, “To this end, the P.J Patterson Institute for Africa Caribbean Advocacy at The University of the West Indies was established in 2020 to become the hub for advocacy and facilitation in this area. As part of The UWI System, which includes several academic centers on the African continent, the Institute seeks to access intellectual resources and research to support its advocacy role.”
He continued by stating that “the Caribbean intellectual tradition is a profound one, and it has made extensive contributions to the questions about being human and what that means for the world. Let us recognize the complexity of this tradition and also be attentive to its popular forms as we seek to transcend commercial and generational boundaries”.
Vice chancellor of The UWI, chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Committee, and advisory board member of the Institute, Sir Hilary Beckles, stated, “The Reparatory Justice Movement is grateful to the P.J. Patterson Institute for Caribbean African Advocacy (UWI) for developing and hosting an Honorary Fellowship for reparations advocacy, which has attracted the inaugural occupancy by Laura Trevelyan, who has been a pioneer in pursuing a strategy to bring heirs-of -slavery-enrichment to the table of accountability.”
As an associate fellow for Africa and Caribbean advocacy, Trevelyan expressed her intention to support the reparative justice movement and promised to “do my best to help build on the global momentum towards healing and repair as we finally begin to confront the legacies of transatlantic slavery in Africa and in the Caribbean”.
