Keston K. Perry

Photo of Keston K. Perry

Assistant Professor of Africana Studies

413-597-3261
Hollander Hall Rm 257

Education

B.A. University of the West Indies
M.Sc. Newcastle University Business School
Ph.D. School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London

Areas of Expertise

Plantation Economy Tradition

Reparations

Black Radicalisms

Race and Climate change

Caribbean Economic History

 

About

As a political economist, Dr Perry’s work is specialized in Caribbean economic thought, race and climate change in the Caribbean and marginalized communities. Dr. Perry’s work is inspired by Caribbean scholars like Lloyd Best, Sylvia Wynter, Norman Girvan, Rex Nettleford, and Audre Lorde among others, whose insights feature in his teaching, research and public scholarship.

 

Grounded in Caribbean economic and social sciences tradition, this work recognizes that Caribbean societies which are racialized, fetishized, gendered and marginalized face immense and myriad environmental, political and economic challenges due to histories of colonialism, enslavement, post-colonial fracturing, neoliberal globalization and their enduring marginal position in the world economic system. Caribbean peoples and movements have nonetheless endured, thrived and resisted oppressive systems and their continuing legacies. He/they connect these understandings to contemporary climate crises to foster interdisciplinary scholarly engagement.

 

Born and nurtured in the Caribbean, Dr Perry’s experiences as working class, queer, first-gen college graduate, and from the Global South shapes how he/they navigate the world. Dr. Perry’s appreciation of Caribbean economic history, quantitative and qualitative data and methods informs his scholarship and public engagement. Dr. Perry is developing new approaches and deepening analyses of current problems in his project ‘Climate Reparations, Justice and Reparative Ecologies in the Caribbean’. He/they utilize subversive methods to unsettle ideological and colonialist premises of economic data and knowledge claims, as well as misapprehensions in order to make a distinctive contribution to the Black Radical and Plantation Economy Traditions. This work advances political economic insights to build an emancipatory and reparative approach to social justice and climate equity. He/they have previously taught at the University of the West of England, UK and the University of the West Indies and was a postdoctoral scholar at the Climate Policy Lab, Fletcher School, Tufts University.

 

His academic, critical and other musings can be found on Twitter at @radical_carib.

Scholarship/Creative Work

Selected Peer-reviewed publications

For politics, people or the planet? The political economy of fossil fuel reform, energy dependence and climate policy in Haiti, Energy Research and Social Sciences, 63.

Structuralism and Human Development: A Seamless Marriage? An Assessment of Poverty, Production and Environmental Challenges in CARICOM Countries, International Journal of
Political Economy 49 (3), 222-242.

Financing a Global Green New Deal: greening capitalism or taming financialization under a new “civilizing” multilateralism’, Development and Change (invited contribution to Forum 2021 Issue)

(Un)just Transitions and Black Dispossession: the disposability of Caribbean ‘climate refugees’ and the political economy of climate justice, Politics (Special Issue on Race and Climate Change)

The New Bond-age, climate crisis and the case for climate reparations: unpicking old/new colonialities of finance for development under the SDGS, Geoforum

Reports

Realizing Climate Reparations: towards a global climate stabilization fund and resilience fund program for loss and damage in marginalized and former colonized societies, commissioned by the United Nations Association of the United Kingdom (2020).

Analysis of International Funding for Haiti’s Climate Change Priorities (co-authored with Kelly Sims Gallagher, Mieke Wansem, Laura Kuhl and Laurent Frapaise) Climate Policy Lab,
Center for International Environment and Resource Policy, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University (2018).

 

Media interviews

What is Climate Justice? Deutsche Welle (German Public broadcaster), May 2021.

Protests in Haiti: An Overlooked Crisis, Real News Network, October 2019.

 

Analyses

How not to Save the Planet, Africa is a Country, September 2020.

Between the Devil, Debt and the Deep Blue Sea: Why the Global South deserves
reparations for the climate crisis (invited blog post), The FingReg Blog, Global Financial Markets Center, Duke University, August 2020.

Climate reparations: an internationalist approach for the 21st century, Political and Legal Anthropology Blog, July 2020.

The ‘green’ new deal should not be the new imperial masterplan, Al-Jazeera English, June 2020.

Why we need an IMF for the climate crisis, The Guardian UK, October 2019.

What is really behind the crisis in Haiti? Al-Jazeera English (cited on Democracy Now) September 2019.

Professional Affiliations

American Economic Association (AEA)

National Economics Association (NEA)

International Society of Ecological Economics (ISEE)

Union of Radical Political Economy (URPE)

American Association of Geographers

Editorial Board, Review of Radical Political Economics

Editorial Board, International Journal of Technological Learning, Innovation and Development