Dr Sonjah Stanley Niaah

Sonjah Stanley Niaah is a Jamaican scholar, international speaker and Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies’ (UWI) Mona Campus where she has served in such positions as Director, Institute of Caribbean Studies (2015-2021) and Deputy Dean, Marketing and Resource Mobilisation (2022-2024). She is a leading author, teacher and researcher on Black Atlantic performance geographies, popular culture, and the sacred, and Caribbean Cultural Studies more broadly. She holds international appointments as member of the International Scientific Committee of the Slave Route Project, UNESCO (since 2017), Senior Research Associate (honorary), Rhodes University, and Advisor, International Cultural Diversity Organisation. She also serves as a board member of the Glasgow Caribbean Centre for Development Research at The UWI, Cave Hill Campus. She is the author of numerous publications, among them, the acclaimed Dancehall: From Slave Ship to Ghetto (2010), and editor of Dancehall: A Reader on Jamaican Music and Culture (2020) among others. Her research and opinions have appeared in various media, among them The Guardian, BBC, The Washington Post, NPR, The Fader and Pop Matters. More recently, her commentary can be viewed in documentary film series such as Samuel L. Jackson's Enslaved and Move (Netflix). In 2019 she introduced the Sound Culture book series at The UWI Press which is dedicated to publishing original work on Caribbean music. Dr. Stanley Niaah now spends personal and academic time advancing the study of culture, music and reparatory justice at various levels. She was a team member in the development of the double masters degree programme in Reparatory Justice (UWI and University of Glasgow), and  her academic work has incorporated concerns around entertainment prohibition and reparatory justice.