Educated at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill Campus in Barbados, and the University of Liège (ULiège) in Belgium, Dr Willie is a Saint Lucian teacher, creative writer and researcher, who joined the University of Glasgow as Lecturer in Black British and/or African Diasporic Studies in January 2024.

As a teacher, Dr Willie emphasises the need to show understanding and empathy to all and attempts as much as possible to make her classroom, a safe and inclusive space. She has taught courses in African Diasporic Literature, Caribbean Cultures, Postcolonial History, and Literary Theory at UWI, UCLan and Newcastle University, and is very passionate about facilitating courses that explore slavery and colonialism. As a creative writer, Dr Willie explores, through fiction, essays and poetry, Caribbean culture, and issues about which so many of us would prefer to remain silent.

Due to her interests in Race, Slavery, Disability and African Diasporic matters, Dr Willie’s research is interdisciplinary. She has held research positions at ULiège’s Centre for Teaching and Postcolonial Research (2015 - 2016) in Belgium, Linnaeus University’s Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies in Sweden (2016 & 2019), and the University of Central Lancashire’s Institute for Black Atlantic Research in Preston (2018).

Dr Willie’s interdisciplinary doctoral research on the degree to which the Saint Lucian author, Garth St. Omer, adapts existentialist philosophy to explore colonialism, slavery and exile in the Caribbean, was instrumental in revitalising the author’s work, and resituating him in the Black Atlantic canon.

Dr Willie’s current research aims at intersecting Disability and Slavery Studies, along with Caribbean, Irish and English Literature, to explore the degree to which colonialism has influenced depictions of blindness in 20^th and 21^st Century Caribbean writing.

Research Interests:

•  Postcolonial History
•  Postcolonial Theory
•  Slave Studies
•  20^th & 21^st Century African Diasporic Writing
•  Disability Studies
•  Race Studies
• Caribbean Cultures
•  Queer Theory
•  Black Women Studies
• Psychoanalysis
•  Existentialism
•  Creative Writing

• (2019), Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies Research Fellowship, Linnaeus University, Sweden
• (2018), Postgraduate Research Award, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados
• (2016), Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies Research Fellowship, Linnaeus University, Sweden
• (2015 – 2016), Erasmus Mundus DREAM Mobility Fellowship, Centre for Teaching and Postcolonial Research, University of Liège, Belgium
• (2013) Postgraduate Research Award, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados
• (2012 – 2015), Rex Nettleford Postgraduate Research Fund, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados

Inquiries are welcome from students interested in any aspect of African Diasporic/Black Studies, particularly the intersectionality of Disability Studies and African Diasporic writing.