Open events

The Michael Baptista Lecture has been the annual public event of CERLAC since 1999. It was established by friends and family of Michael Baptista and the Royal Bank of Canada, RBC, to recognize areas central to his remarkable spirit and success, the importance of his Guyanese and Caribbean roots, his dedication and outstanding achievements, and his unconditional drive and love for learning.

Over the last three years, as a result of COVID-19, CERLAC decided to hold a series of on-line forums – renamed as the Baptista Lecture Series - to build networks that address concerns of Black, Indigenous, and Caribbean communities regionally and transnationally. These events allowed our Centre to remain engaged with issues of great urgency at home and abroad, while at the same time we were able to continue building a constructive community of scholars through collaborative partnerships beyond the University campus. In fact, the seven on-line events celebrated in the context of the series covered substantive thematic grounds and interdisciplinary perspectives, from reparations to land dispossession and urban spatial justice in Latin American and the Caribbean

In light of the University reopening to in-person activities and the lifting of almost all health restrictions, the Baptista Committee is transitioning back to holding in-person events on campus. While maintaining its key preoccupation with issues relating to struggles for social justice in the Americas, the Baptista Lecture at Congress 2023 aims at nurturing academic conversations across the Latin American and Caribbean regions, with a focus on epistemological Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean perspectives and will feature the work of prominent Indigenous and Black scholars / activists in Latin America, the Caribbean and Canada.

Please note this event will be presented in English. Bilingual titles and descriptions are for reference purposes only.