Clem Seecharan

Life and career

Seecharan grew up in East Berbice-Corentyne, and attended the Sheet Anchor Anglican School, the Berbice Educational Institute, and Queen’s College in Guyana. He studied at McMaster University in Canada, and taught Caribbean Studies at the University of Guyana for some years, before completing his doctorate in History at the University of Warwick in 1990. He joined the staff of the University of North London (now a part of London Metropolitan University), where he was head of Caribbean studies since 1994, and was awarded a professorship in 2002. He currently teaches on the Caribbean Studies programme at London Metropolitan University.

Publications

A distinguished Caribbean historian, Seecharan is the author of publications that include Indo-West Indian Cricket (with Frank Birbalsingh; Hansib, 1988), India and the Shaping of the Indo-Guyanese Imagination: 1890-1920 (Peepal Tree Press, 1993) and Indians in British Guiana 1919-1929 (Macmillan Publishers). In 2005 his biography of Jock Campbell, Sweetening Bitter Sugar: Jock Campbell, the Booker Reformer in British Guiana 1934-1966 was published (Ian Randle Publishers, Jamaica) and won the Elsa Gouveia Prize from the Association of Caribbean Historians, their citation describing it as "an extraordinarily impressive book of signal importance in Caribbean history and historiography." His most recent book, Muscular Learning: Cricket and Education in the Making of the British West Indies at the End of the 19th Century, was published in 2006 (Ian Randle Publishers).