Donna P. Hope

Donna P. Hope is Professor of Culture, Gender and Society in the Institute of Caribbean Studies and former Deputy Dean, Graduate Studies and Research in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus in Kingston, Jamaica. She is the Founder and Executive Director of The Dancehall Archive and Research Initiative ("DHA") that aims to preserve and disseminate the knowledge and culture of dancehall for current and future generations across the world by facilitating and encouraging the pursuit of research and scholarship, art, culture around dancehall culture. The DHA also encourages innovation in the Dancehall industry by providing tools and lead-ins to participants. Visit the DHA's website here http://dancehallarchive.org/. A seasoned and astute communicator, Professor Hope has hosted several Jamaican radio talk shows and penned various articles in the Jamaican newspapers as an intermittent or regular columnist and shares her views as a social commentator in national and international media. Professor Hope's research on Jamaican culture and music spans more than three decades, beginning with her love of the music and culture as a teenager. She has published extensively and made numerous conference and seminar presentations on Jamaican dancehall culture in Europe, Latin & South America, North America and the Caribbean. Her two full-length award-winning books, "Inna di Dancehall: Popular Culture and the Politics of Identity in Jamaica" (UWI Press 2006) and Man Vibes: Masculinities in the Jamaican Dancehall (Ian Randle 2010) draw from research undertaken over many years in her key areas of research which include Jamaican music and dancehall culture, cultural/creative industries, youth development, black masculinities, black popular culture, gender, identity, and power. Her three edited collections are International Reggae: Current and Future Trends in Jamaican Popular Music (Pelican Publishers 2013), Reggae From Yaad: Traditional and Emerging Themes in Jamaican Popular Music (Ian Randle Publishers 2015) and ReggaeStories: Jamaican Musical Legends and Cultural Legacies (UWI Press 2018). Her newest book (August 2023) is a bilingual publication co-edited with Carla Lamoyi titled Dancehall Queen: Erotic Subversion/Subversion Erotica in English and Spanish, and published jointly by The Dancehall Archive and Fiebre Ediciones. A sought-after motivational speaker and what she calls a "closet poet", she shared several life lessons in her self-published biographical, motivational book, titled Chicken Back Gravy and Such Delights: Life Lessons from My Journey (2018). Professor Hope is currently finalising the manuscripts for another biographical motivational book titlled Words of Hope for Teenage Mothers along with her first volume of poetry. On the academic side she is completing an edited collection on the problematized popular culture figure of dancehall deejay Vybz Kartel and drafting her manuscript, Dancehall's Scattered Children on dancehall culture's globalized spread via the dancehall dance industry. Professor Hope completed her B.A. in Mass Communication (Hons.) and Masters of Philosophy in Political Science at the University of the West Indies, Mona. She was awarded a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship in 2002 and completed a PhD in Cultural Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. An avid reader of biographies, dramas, science fiction and horror, she cites Stephen King her most favourite author of all time. Now that her son is an adult, she enjoys spending time with family and friends, trying out new recipes and dealing with her plants and DIY projects at home.