© Marlene Hugoson

Keynote Speakers

Henry Glassie is Professor Emeritus of Folklore at Indiana University and a Fellow and former President of the American Folklore Society. His impressive range of research topics – including mumming, vernacular architecture, storytelling, carpet weaving, music, and pottery making – has informed his understanding of the interlinking of work, art, and community. Glassie’s remarkable body of writing includes such field-defining books as Folk Housing in Middle Virginia (1975), Passing the Time in Ballymenone (1982), Turkish Traditional Art Today (1993), Art and Life in Bangladesh (1997), and Material Culture (1999).

Godfrey Baldacchino edits Island Studies Journal and is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Island Studies at the University of Prince Edward Island. He has recently researched immigrant entrepreneurship, cold water island tourism, and the effects of fixed links on island communities. Baldacchino’s interdisciplinary work on island economics and identity – exemplified by two books co-edited with David Milne, Lessons from the Political Economy of Small Islands (2000) and The Case for Non-Sovereignty (2008) –  has reoriented the dialogue on jursidictional capacity.

David Lowenthal is Professor Emeritus of Geography at University College London and Senior Fellow of the British Academy. His work over the past six decades has helped guide research into geography, history, and heritage, and his longstanding interest in islandness and island communities has contributed to the theoretical backdrop for the emerging field of island studies. Lowenthal’s work on Caribbean island identities, including his groundbreaking West Indian Societies (1972), has highlighted the interaction between culture, economy, and governance. His profoundly influential publications include The Past is a Foreign Country (1985), ‘Social Features’ in Clarke and Payne’s Politics, Security & Development in Small States (1987), and The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (1998).