| Verene Shepherd | |
| Birth Name: | Verene Albertha Shepherd |
| Birth Place: | Hopewell, Saint Mary Parish, Jamaica |
| Occupation: | Academic and writer |
| Education: | St. Mary High School |
| Alma Mater: | University of the West Indies (BA; MPhil); University of Cambridge (PhD) |
| Employer: | University of the West Indies, Mona |
Verene Albertha Shepherd (née Lazarus; born 1960) is a Jamaican academic who is a professor of social history at the University of the West Indies in Mona. She is the director of the university's Institute for Gender and Development Studies, and specialises in Jamaican social history and diaspora studies.
She has published prolifically in journals and books on topics including Jamaican economic history during slavery, the Indian experience in Jamaica, migration and diasporas and Caribbean women's history,[1] and is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa.[2]
Shepherd was born in Hopewell, Saint Mary Parish, Jamaica, one of the ten children of Ruthlyn and Alfred Lazarus. She attended Huffstead Basic School, Rosebank Primary School, and St. Mary High School, and then completed a teaching certificate at Shortwood Teachers' College. Shepherd went on to the University of the West Indies, where she completed a BA degree in history in 1976 and a M.Phil. in history in 1982. She was later awarded a PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1988 for her thesis on the economic history of colonial Jamaica.[3]
In 1988, Shepherd joined the Department of History at the University of the West Indies. She was elevated to a full professorship in 2001, and in 2010 was appointed director of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies.[4] [5] She has served as president of the Association of Caribbean Historians, chair of the Jamaica National Heritage Trust, chair of the Jamaica National Bicentenary Committee.[6]
Shepherd specialises in Jamaican social history and diaspora studies. She is an advocate of reparations for slavery,[7] [8] [9] and in 2016 was appointed co-chair of Jamaica's National Council on Reparations.[10] Shepherd has also held several positions within the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), serving as a member of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent (WGEPAD) and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. She was chair of WGEPAD from 2011 to 2014, and lobbied for the creation of the International Decade for People of African Descent.[11]
In 2013, in her role as chair of WGEPAD, Shepherd was asked to inquire into Zwarte Piet ("Black Pete"). She authored a letter, on "headed, official UN high commission for human rights paper"[12] to the Dutch government proposing that it move towards ending the tradition, and in a later interview with EenVandaag described the character as "a throwback to slavery".[13] Her remark complicated and further polarized an ongoing national debate, accompanied by protests and social media campaigns, in particular as she was supposedly speaking on behalf of the UN when this was not actually the case.[12] Her remarks that Sinterklaas, a national feast in the Netherlands central to Dutch culture, could just be done away with in its entirety because "one Santa Claus is enough",[14] (apparently referring to the American version who partially descends from Sinterklaas but is decidedly not the same), caused much anger and unleashed a public reaction that continues to have ramifications years later. A number of public figures, including Mark Rutte and Geert Wilders, spoke out in defence of Zwarte Piet.[15] A Belgian UNESCO official later claimed that Shepherd had no authority to speak on behalf of the UN and was "abusing the name of the UN to bring her own agenda to the media".[12]