The 2025 Michael Baptista Lecture and CALACS Conference Opening Ceremony:
Reshaping Sovereignty and Resilience: Caribbean and Latin American
Development & Agency in a Shifting Global Economy
With Dr. Bhoendradatt Tewarie
Thursday, May 15, 2025 at 5:30pm
Founders Assembly Hall (152 Founders College) |Keele Campus | York University
Reception to Follow
The 2025 Michael Baptista Lecture is the annual public event of CERLAC. The lecture presents an opportunity to interrogate the political, social, and cultural ramifications of rapidly transforming trade regimes on the Caribbean and Latin America. The lecture will move beyond conventional economic analyses to foreground how current trade and protectionist policies are reconfiguring regional relationships, national development priorities, and collective imaginaries. By tracing the symbolic and material effects of tariff regimes and other exclusionary trade mechanisms, the event explores how new and enduring boundaries, both geopolitical and socio-cultural, are being constructed, contested, and navigated. It seeks to illuminate the ways in which these dynamics have disrupted the circulation of people, goods, capital, and ideas, while simultaneously provoking diverse forms of response, adaptation and innovation.
In alignment with the lecture’s longstanding commitment to critical inquiry and public engagement, this year’s event offers a vital platform for scholars, practitioners, and community members to reflect collectively on the evolving contours of hemispheric relations and the enduring struggles for justice, autonomy, and dignity across the Caribbean and Latin American region.
Dr. Bhoendradatt Tewarie | The University of the West Indies | Pro Vice Chancellor for Planning and Development at the University of the West Indies | Founding Director of the Institute of Critical Thinking St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago
Dr. Bhoendradatt Tewarie served as Principal of the St. Augustine Campus of the University of the West Indies, as Executive Director of the Institute of Business, and as Chairman of the National Institute for Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology (NIHERST). As Chairman of NIHERST, he facilitated the creation of the College of Science, Technology and Applied Arts of Trinidad and Tobago (COSTAAT) and developed the rationale for the establishment of the National Training Agency (NTA). He also served as Chairman of the Committee, which formulated a National Policy for Tertiary Education for the Vision 2020 Committee. Dr. Tewarie has published three books, as well as many articles and book chapters on economic, educational and developmental issues and has written three books.
Discussant: Diego Sánchez-Ancochea | University of Oxford | Professor of the Political Economy of Development
Dr. Sánchez-Ancochea specialises in the political economy of Latin America with a particular focus on Central America. His research interests centre on the determinants of income inequality and the role of social policy in reducing it. He studied for his PhD in Economics at the New School for Social Research (New York) and previously taught at the Institute for the Study of the Americas (University of London) between 2003 and 2008. Professor Sánchez-Ancochea has been a visiting fellow at the University of Costa Rica, at FLACSO-Dominican Republic and the program Desigualdades (Berlin) and most recently at the Kellogg Institute (University of Notre Dame). He was co-editor of the Journal of Latin American Studies (2015-19), Treasurer of the Latin American Studies Association (2018-20) and director of the Latin American Centre at Oxford (2015-18). His most recent book, The Costs of Inequality: Lessons and Warnings for the Rest of the World (Bloomsbury, 2020), was selected as one of the best books in Economics in 2020 by the Financial Times.
Moderator: Tameka Samuels-Jones | School of Administrative Studies | York University
Dr. Tameka Samuels-Jones is an Assistant Professor at York University and Co-Director of York University’s Centre for Research on Latin America & the Caribbean. She teaches Corporate Social Responsibility & Sustainability and Justice, Governance & Accountability in the Global South. Her research interests include AI ethics in the Global South, environmental crime, Black Indigenous law in the Caribbean and regulatory law. Specifically, she conducts research on the impacts of Canadian extractivism in Latin America & the Caribbean. She is dedicated to research which emphasizes inclusivity in the development of environmental policies and laws particularly in countries in the Global South. Dr. Samuels-Jones has received numerous awards for her work in equity including the Canada Research Chairs Program’s Robbins-Ollivier Award for Excellence in Equity. Dr. Samuels-Jones’ work has been published in various academic journals and presented at international conferences.
