Clem Seecharan

Professor Clem Seecharan, BA, MA, PhD is a writer and historian of the Indo-Caribbean experience, as well as a historian of West Indies cricket. He was born at Palmyra, East Canje, Berbice, Guyana, in 1950. He attended the Sheet Anchor Anglican School, Berbice Educational Institute and Queen’s College. He studied at McMaster University in Canada; and taught Caribbean Studies at the University of Guyana before completing his doctorate in History at the University of Warwick in 1990. He joined the University of North London (now London Metropolitan University) in 1993 and was the Head of Caribbean Studies there for nearly 20 years. In 2002 Clem was awarded a Professorship in History at the London Metropolitan University where he is now Emeritus Professor of History. He is the only person to have taught courses, in the UK, on the Intellectual History of the Caribbean, the History of Indians in the Caribbean and the History of West Indies Cricket. In 2003 he was awarded a Certificate of Distinction by the Guyana High Commission (London) ‘in recognition of his achievement in his profession in the United Kingdom’.

A distinguished historian, his main publications are (with Frank Birbalsingh) Indo-West Indian Cricket (Hansib,1988); India and the Shaping of the Indo-Guyanese Imagination: 1890s-1920s (Peepal Tree Press, 1993) ‘Tiger in the Stars’: The Anatomy of Indian Achievement in British Guiana, 1919-1929 (Macmillan Caribbean, 1997), Bechu: ‘Bound Coolie’ Radical in British Guiana, 1894-1901 (UWI Press, 1999); Joseph Ruhomon’s India: India and the Progress of her People at Home and Abroad (UWI Press, 2001);Sweetening ‘Bitter Sugar’. Jock Campbell, the Booker Reformer in British Guiana 1934-1966 (Ian Randle Publishers, 2005) [awarded the Elsa Goveia Prize (2005), by the Association of Caribbean Historians]; Muscular Learning: Cricket and Education in the Making of the British West Indies at the End of the 19th Century, (Ian Randle Publishers, 2006). From Ranji to Rohan: Cricket and Indian Identity in Colonial Guyana 1890s -1960s (Hansib, 2009); Mother India's Shadow over El Dorado: Indo-Guyanese Politics and Identity, 1890s-1930s (Ian Randle Publishers, 2011). His new collection of essays, Finding Myself: Essays in Race Politics and Culture is published by Peepal Tree Press.

He has delivered several prestigious lectures, including the Walter Rodney Memorial Lecture, University of Warwick (2007); the Sir Frank Worrell Lecture, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados (2011); the Leonard Tim Hector Memorial Lecture, Antigua and Barbuda (2011); the feature lecture to Global Organisation of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO), New York City (2011); and the 2014 Republic of Guyana Distinguished Lecture.

Author photograph courtesy Colin Babb.

Clem Seecharan

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