Dr Stanley Niaah is the Director of the Institute of Caribbean Studies & the Reggae Studies Unit at the University of the West Indies (UWI) at Mona, and the inaugural Rhodes Trust Rex Nettleford Fellow in Cultural Studies (2005), Sonjah Stanley Niaah is a Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the UWI, Mona Campus. Stanley Niaah currently 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 has served as Vice Chair of the international Association for Cultural Studies for which she coordinated the first conference held in the Global South at the UWI (2008). She is a leading author, teacher and researcher on Black Atlantic performance geographies, popular music, culture and the sacred, and Caribbean Cultural Studies more broadly. Stanley Niaah is the author of the forthcoming text Reggae Pilgrims: Festivals and the Movement of Jah People (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019), and Dancehall: From Slave Ship to Ghetto (2010, University of Ottawa Press). She has also co-authored A Study on the Creative Industry as a Pillar of Sustained Growth and Diversification - The Film And Music Sectors In Jamaica: Lessons From Case Studies of Successful Firms and Ventures, now a published monograph in the UNECLAC Studies and Perspectives Series (No. 72).  Alongside books and monographs, Stanley Niaah is editor of "I'm Broader than Broadway: Caribbean Perspectives on Producing Celebrity' (Wadabagei, Vol. 12: 2, 2009) and is currently finalising editorship of the Jamaican Dancehall Reader(forthcoming UWI Press 2020) which is the first compilation of seminal and current writings on Dancehall music and culture. 

Dr Stanley Niaah serves on the boards and editorial collectives of numerous academic associations, institutions and journals including Cultural Studies, The Black Scholar and DanceCult. A Jamaican nationalist and Caribbean regionalist at heart, she is involved in efforts to promote national and regional development specifically the cultural and creative industries through her current / past work on the Culture Advisory Committee of the Jamaica National Commission for UNESCO, Jamaica Reggae Industry Association, Jamaica Association of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, as Assistant Chief Examiner for the Caribbean Examination Council Advanced Proficiency Examination in Caribbean Studies, secondments to JAMPRO and the Ministry of Youth, Sport and Culture, the Entertainment Advisory Board, Museums Division of the Institute of Jamaica and Monitoring & Content Committee of the Broadcasting Commission, Jamaica. She had also served as member of the selection committee of the Rhodes Trust Rex Nettleford Fellowship in Cultural Studies. Having developed a keen interest in popular music and education as a tool for social transformation, Stanley Niaah gives occasional talks on the Jamaican music sector, and building communities using education around which she has developed projects on incarcerated persons and capacity building for the cultural industries including the State of the Music Initiative. A heavily sought after speaker, Stanley Niaah has addressed various audiences, including via local and international media, among them Rototom Sunsplash TV http://www.rototom.tv/videos/culture/reggae-university/ Television Jamaica https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9tpTNVha6o Jamaica Gleaner http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20170303/uwi-lecturer-calls-change-noise-abatement-act#.Wdk2GNjnwWZ.twitter and VICELAND  https://www.viceland.com/en_us/video/jamaica-with-popcaan-chronixx/56f2f5f86ad75d767e3a39a7among others http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/a-war-on-jamaican-dancehall-is-threatening-kingstons-street-life

She is also an active tweeter @sonjahstanley and blogger at http://www.dancehallgeographies.wordpress.com

Last Modified: Sat, 22 May 2021 16:19:18 SAST