Reparatory Justice (Taught)

This double degree Masters programme offers a unique opportunity to work with leading scholars in Reparatory Justice at The University of the West Indies (UWI) and the University of Glasgow (UofG). Directed by the Glasgow-Caribbean Centre for Development Research (GCCDR), the programme is a collaboration between the Beniba Centre for Slavery Studies in Glasgow and the Centre for Reparations Research at The UWI. You can choose to study at one of three campuses: Cave Hill Campus in Barbados, Gilmorehill Campus in Glasgow, UK, or Mona Campus in Jamaica.

Why this programme

• With a specific focus on the Caribbean and the slavery reparations movement, the programme will also draw on case studies of campaigns for reparative justice in other global contexts.

• You will learn how to conduct practical and theoretical research using archival, interviews and legal research while also gaining experience in organisations doing reparative work to produce a final research project on reparative justice.

• The University of the West Indies is a world-leader in the formulation, activism and academic research underpinning claims for reparations for slavery. Students will be able to access archives and library collections in Barbados and Jamaica for research.

• The University of Glasgow offers access to primary source materials and material culture holdings and draws on a range of expertise across the study of slavery, genocide and human rights violations.

• This double degree leverages the close relationship and official partnership between The University of the West Indies and The University of Glasgow, and enabling students to graduate with a degree from both institutions.

• Read in the Guardian: World’s first reparatory justice master’s launches in Glasgow and West Indies.

• Read our news story: First students graduate from pioneering Reparatory Justice Masters Programme

• Listen to our podcast: Stories from Glasgow – Tracing Glasgow's Imperial Past with Dr Rosie Spooner.

Programme structure
You will take:

four core courses (two offered by The UWI, two by UofG)
two optional courses
You will also produce a dissertation.

Core courses
Semester one
Slavery, Conflict and Human Rights
Reparations Now (Part One)

Semester two
Pedagogy of Reparatory Justice
Qualitative Approaches to the Study of Political Violence

Optional courses
You will choose two optional courses from an available range of topics. The optional courses are updated each year, but may include:

Resistance to Slavery from 1700 to 1900
Raw Material: Literature, Empires, Commodities (PGT)
Postcolonialism: Writing and Theory (PGT)
A 'New Form of Slavery'?: Indentured Labour in Post-Slavery Caribbean Societies, c. 1836-1917
Summer: April to September
Dissertation. Reparatory Justice.

Teaching and assessment
Teaching is mainly seminar and discussion-based in small classes. As students will be based in both the Caribbean and the UK, seminars will be delivered in a ‘hybrid’ format, meaning some students will be in the classroom at the University of the West Indies, with University of Glasgow students joining via online video link and vice versa.

Technical skills are taught in the core courses, while conceptual foundations are explored in weekly seminars. Independent and self-reflective critical work is fostered through written assignments and seminar presentations, culminating in the dissertation.