Sonjah Stanley Niaah 🇯🇲

Sonjah Stanley Niaah is a Jamaican cultural theorist, scholar activist, author, blogger and international speaker. She is the first Ph.D. Cultural Studies graduate from the University of the West Indies (UWI) and the first to be appointed Lecturer, and Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies there. She is also the inaugural Rhodes Trust Rex Nettleford Fellow in Cultural Studies and has distinguished herself as a pioneer in the terrain of Caribbean Cultural Studies. She is the author of the acclaimed full-length book Dancehall: From Slave Ship to Ghetto (2010), and editor of Dancehall: A Reader on Jamaican Music and Culture (2020). Stanley Niaah has been Director of the Institute of Caribbean Studies and the Reggae Studies Unit at the UWI since 2015 and holds international appointments as member of the International Scientific Committee of the Slave Route Project (UNESCO), and Senior Research Associate (honorary) at Rhodes University. She serves on numerous boards and editorial collectives, in academic associations, institutions and journals, and her research and opinions have appeared in various local and international media including The Guardian, BBC, The Washington Post, Netflix, NPR, VICE TV, Caribbean Beat, The Fader, Refinery29 and Pop Matters.